eBusiness Weekly
As Naomi Osaka nears a long-awaited return to tennis, a surprise revelation has surfaced about her reaction to falling pregnant.
Former world No. 1 Naomi Osaka was not in a great place in 2022.
The four-time Grand Slam winner was struggling through a terrible season by her lofty standards and parted ways with her coach Wim Fissette, who suspected she was lacking the motivation required to compete at the top of women’s tennis.
So the news towards the end of that year that Osaka had fallen pregnant provided a massive boost, not just to her personal and family life, but also to her tennis career.
Starting a family can sometimes pause and even end professional sporting careers for a variety of reasons, but Osaka went in a very different direction.
While it did naturally force a break in her on-court pursuits, it also lit a fire under her and gave the Japanese superstar a whole new determination to recapture her best.
The 26-year-old gave birth to daughter Shai on July 7 and will end her 15-month break from the WTA Tour in Brisbane next month before competing at the Australian Open.
Osaka posted a long message on X this week thanking fans for their support and feeling “very honoured to be going on chapter 2 of this tennis journey”.
While millions of Osaka’s fans can’t wait for her return, noted tennis journalist Ben Rothenberg will also be an extremely interested onlooker.
A former writer with the New York Times, Rothenberg spent much of that 2022 season travelling with Osaka collaborating on a book.
Titled Naomi Osaka: Her journey to finding her power and her voice, it is being released next month and Rothenberg gave some fascinating insights into Osaka’s journey over the last 18 months as she nears a long-awaited return to tennis.
“She seems to be doing really well,” Rothenberg told news.com.au.
“She’s reunited with her old coach, Wim Fissette, who she was coached by when she won her most recent two Grand Slam titles.
“They parted fairly mutually in 2022 after a run of bad results and he was having doubts about her motivation and feeling like he was a lot more ambitious than she was. She really was losing a bit of direction it seemed from all accounts in 2022.
“After she got the news that she was pregnant, she discovered a new sense of purpose and motivation and determination. Rather than using it as an excuse to leave the sport, which one might do potentially in that position, it redoubled her drive and intensity and commitment to tennis.
“She won back Fissette’s trust and confidence, so they’ve been in California working together for more than a month now.
“She’s posted some training videos and her fitness looks good and all seems to be on track for her comeback in Brisbane and then the Australian Open.”
Osaka is something of an enigma in world sport, blending shyness and self-consciousness with equal levels of self-confidence and a determination to speak her mind.
While she has become a cultural icon, the top-ranked woman in her sport and at times the world’s highest paid female athlete, Rothenberg says that unlikely mix remains.
He first became aware of Osaka when she was trying unsuccessfully to qualify for Wimbledon at the age of 17.
It was after Osaka’s first appearance in a Grand Slam main draw at the 2016 Australian Open that Rothenberg wrote a story on her for the NYT.
“I was immediately struck by her and her personality and being this fascinating blend of both shy but also full of a certain kind of self-belief,” he explained.
“This confidence and self-consciousness that she still has in a lot of ways.
“Seeing her become a star and a champion and having to confront that public profile has been interesting over the years as she did it in some pretty memorable ways.” That’s putting it mildly.
Rothenberg details Osaka’s life and accomplishments in a series of individual chapters, with two of them dedicated to the lead-up to, and the fallout from, one particular match.
It is the 2018 US Open final, when the shy star catapulted onto the world stage in a contest Rothenberg labelled the most controversial tennis match ever.
Seeded 20th, Osaka won her first Grand Slam title by beating her idol in straight sets.
But the match is remembered for a different battle, between Serena Williams and chair umpire Carlos Ramos, with the American given code violations for coaching from the stands and racquet abuse.
She was eventually deducted a game after calling Ramos a “liar” and a “thief” in a match that ended with Osaka in tears and Serena asking fans to stop booing.
“It was a huge, huge cultural moment and broke across some really interesting cultural lines,” Rothenberg said.
“Because of the heat around that moment, for Naomi it really poured a lot of rocket fuel onto her launch.
“It wasn’t just that she won a US Open title and not even that she beat Serena, but she beat Serena in this most talked about, controversial tennis match of all time.
“Even if Naomi had nothing to do with any of the actual controversy, it really did launch her into a much higher, faster orbit of attention and celebrity than she would have just from winning a grand slam title.”
Osaka called it a “bittersweet moment” as she prevented her idol winning a record-equalling 24th Grand Slam singles title.
Rothenberg also says “a lot of things in her later struggles trace back to everything that happened in that final”.
In 2020, Osaka became heavily involved in the Black Lives Matter movement, wearing custom face masks throughout that year’s US Open bearing the names of black people who had been killed in America. — news.comausport
