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About Naomi Osaka:
Naomi Osaka is a professional tennis player from Japan who was born on October 16, 1997. She is the first Asian player to achieve the top singles ranking in tennis, having been rated No. 1 in the world by the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA). With two Australian Open and two US Open championships, Osaka is a four-time Grand Slam singles winner. Two of her seven WTA Tour championships are at the Premier Mandatory category.
She became the first woman to win her first two major singles wins in consecutive majors since Jennifer Capriati in 2001, and the first to win consecutive major singles titles since Serena Williams in 2015.
Quick Facts:
- Birth Name: Naomi Osaka
- Birth Date: October 16, 1997
- Birth Place: Japan
- Gender: Female
- Career: Professional Tennis Player
- Most Known For: Naomi Osaka’s Grand Slam victories at the 2018 U.S. Open and the 2019 Australian Open propelled her to the top of the women’s tennis rankings globally. She was the first Asian player to hold this position of prominence, regardless of gender.
Early Life:
On October 16, 1997, Naomi Osaka was born in Chūō-ku, Osaka, Japan. Her parents are Leonard François and Tamaki Osaka. Her father is from Jacmel, Haiti, while her mother is from Nemuro, Hokkaido, Japan. Mari, her elder sister, used to be a professional tennis player.
Osaka’s family relocated from Japan to Elmont, New York, on Long Island, where she was raised by her father’s parents, when she was three years old. Her father watched the Williams sisters participate in the 1999 French Open and was motivated to teach his daughters the game of tennis. Despite his lack of tennis knowledge, he tried to imitate how Richard Williams developed his daughters into two of the greatest players in the world.
The family relocated to Florida in 2006, and the daughters spent the day practicing tennis with their father there. They had gone to public school in New York, but they were now homeschooled after hours. During this period, Osaka’s mother worked to provide for the family.
She relocated to the Harold Solomon Tennis Academy in 2014. The ProWorld Tennis Academy was her latter training facility. Osaka’s parents chose for their daughters to represent Japan even though they were raised in America.
Career:
Early Career:
Osaka participated in very few junior events at any age level and never took part in the ITF Junior Circuit, the top international junior circuit. Instead, she jumped over to the ITF Women’s Circuit, where, at the age of 14, she participated in her first qualifying match in October 2011. In March, she and her sister Mari participated in their next event, when she made her professional main-draw debut in doubles.
In the meanwhile, it took her seven attempts to qualify for her maiden singles main draw, which happened in July. She lost to her sister in the semifinals of a $10k event held at Amelia Island, which was her best performance of the 2012 season. At the ITF level, Osaka has only managed to place runner-up four times in her career. She competed in the $25K level in her first two finals, one of which took place in El Paso, Texas in June 2013. The other took place in Irapuato, Mexico in March 2014 and featured a triumph against her sister.
Osaka became a professional in September 2013, just before she turned sixteen. That same month, she qualified for her first two WTA Tour qualifying draws at the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo and the Challenge Bell in Quebec.
Osaka then qualified for her first WTA Tour main draw in the 2014 Stanford Classic the following summer. Osaka kept rising in the rankings in 2015 even though she didn’t win any more main-draw singles matches on the WTA Tour.
Playing on into November, Osaka made it to her career’s largest final at the WTA 125 Hua Hin Championships in Thailand. She ended the year ranked No. 144, having advanced to the semifinals of a $75k event held in Japan.
2016 – 2018 (Beating Serena Williams):
The Women’s Tennis Association named Osaka “Newcomer of the Year” in 2016. Osaka participated in three Australian events to start the season. She was able to participate in WTA Tour events all year long since her performance during this period was strong enough to place her close to the top 100.
Despite making significant progress the year before, Osaka was not able to surpass her previous career high position in 2017. She did, however, stay in the same spot for the whole season, never dropping below her year-end position of No. 68 and never reaching higher than No. 44. At no event during the year did she win more than two main draw matches.
In March 2018, she won her first WTA tour event in Indian Wells, California. After that, in September 2018, Osaka won the U.S. Open, becoming the first player from Japan to win a Grand Slam championship.
Hardcourt was the venue for her biggest victories of the year. Apart from her accomplishments in the US Open and the Canadian Open, she also won a match at the Hong Kong Open, her final tournament of the year, when she defeated Venus Williams, ranked No. 5, in the second round.
In the off-season of 2017, Osaka recruited Sascha Bajin as her coach because she failed to make progress. In their second competition together, Osaka achieved her best-ever performance at a major event in her career.
She defeated two players ranked in the top 20 in the Australian Open, Ashleigh Barty, a hometown favourite, and Elena Vesnina, before falling to world No. 1 Simona Halep in the fourth round. Within the following month, this result enabled her to get back into the top 50.
It wasn’t until Osaka won her second championship of the year at the US Open that she had another breakthrough performance.
She won her maiden major title in 2018, her second victory against Serena Williams in the final.
An on-court altercation between Williams and the umpire, which culminated in Williams being given a game penalty, muddled and ruined the game. The audience continued to boo both during the game and the presentation of awards. Osaka subsequently stated that although the victory wasn’t the happiest memory, it was somewhat bittersweet.
She did, however, become the first Japanese woman to compete in a major singles championship and the first Japanese woman to win a Grand Slam singles match.
2019 – Recent Times:
As the fourth seed going into the Australian Open, Osaka was one of eleven players vying for the top spot in the global rankings.
In the title match, Osaka took the opening set. Kvitová saved three championship points and then broke Osaka in consecutive service games to take the second set.
Still, Osaka bounced back to take home the title. She became the first player to win a Grand Slam singles title in the next event after winning her first since Jennifer Capriati in 2001. She was also the first woman to win consecutive major singles championships since Serena Williams in 2015.
She also made history by being the first Asian player to hold the top singles ranking in the world. She split with her coach Sascha Bajin after the event, despite winning this championship.
Osaka qualified for the WTA Finals for the second year in a row at the end of the season. She did, however, withdraw due to injury after winning her opening match against Petra Kvitová.
Osaka received the third seed in the Australian Open in 2021. She defeated Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Caroline Garcia, and Ons Jabeur in straight sets. In the fourth round, she had match points in the third set but prevailed over Garbiñe Muguruza in three sets.
To win her second Australian Open championship, she proceeded to overcome 22nd seed Jennifer Brady in the final, Serena Williams in the semifinals, and Hsieh Su-wei in the quarterfinals. Following her punishment and possible penalties for missing required news conferences, Osaka withdrew from the 2021 French Open.
With the top seed going into the Melbourne Summer Set 1 event, Osaka made it all the way to the semifinals before pulling out with an abdominal injury.
Her next match was the Australian Open, where she was aiming to defend her title as the 13th seed. However, Amanda Anisimova defeated her in three sets in the third round. Osaka talked on how happy she is despite the defeat and the actions she is doing to feel better mentally and enjoy herself more on the court.
Osaka confirmed her withdrawal from the championships a few days prior to the Australian Open due to her first-child pregnancy. Osaka’s pregnancy with rapper Cordae caused her 2023 season to be cut short. She assured supporters in her resignation statement that she will return for the Australian Open in 2024.
As a wildcard, Osaka returned to the world of professional tennis in Brisbane. In the opening round, she defeated Tamara Korpatsch in straight sets, including a 20-point tiebreak in the first set, then lost to the reigning champion Karolína Plíšková in a close three-set match in the second round.
This was her first professional match since September 2022. Osaka advanced to the quarterfinals of the Qatar Ladies Open, where she was defeated by Karolína Plíšková once more.
Personal Life:
In 2019, Osaka started dating American rapper Cordae, who was also known as YBN Cordae. Shortly after withdrawing from the Australian Open in January 2023, Osaka announced her pregnancy, her first with Cordae.
Osaka contracted Group B streptococcus throughout her pregnancy, for which she required medicines. She also discovered that her unborn child’s neck had the umbilical cord wrapped around it. She welcomed a healthy baby daughter on July 7, 2023.
Osaka has battled depression ever since the US Open in 2018. She was fined $15,000 and faced with the possibility of being kicked out of the French Open in May 2021 for her refusal to participate in the mandatory press conferences.
Osaka withdrew from the tournament on May 31 in order to attend to her mental health and wellbeing. She made an effort to comeback for the Olympics, but part of what caused her to lose in the third round was the pressure to step back into the spotlight.
She was defeated by Leylah Fernandez in September at the US Open; during the match, she tossed her racket three times and was given a code violation for shooting a ball at spectators. When questioned later about the event, she said that she didn’t know why and that she had been experiencing a lot of anxiety when things didn’t go her way. She began therapy and said that regular therapy had a significant positive impact, improving her readiness for such occurrences in the future.
