Naomi Osaka: An extraordinarily talented tennis player whose mental health problems have put the brakes on her career

Naomi Osaka is a Japanese tennis player who broke onto the WTA circuit at a young age. She even made it to the world number one position, but unfortunately, mental problems have slowed her down considerably.

Naomi Osaka was born in 1997 in Osaka, Japan. At the age of three, she moved with her parents to the United States, where she grew up. Her sister also plays tennis professionally, and they have even played doubles together several times.

Early career

Osaka entered her first women’s tournament at the age of 14, when she participated in an ITF tournament in Jamaica. There, although she did not advance past the qualifying rounds, she gained very valuable experience for her next matches.

She made it to the main stage of the tournament for the first time a year later in Indiana and immediately advanced to the second round. Here she was stopped by the home tennis player Burdett. From that point on, she began to gain valuable points in the WTA rankings, culminating in her debut qualification for the WTA tournament in Quebec in 2013.

As with ITF tournaments, she waited a year to participate in the main stage. She then surprised everyone in Stanford, USA, by beating the favoured Stosur in the first round.

Fans began to take notice of her great performance and voted her to represent Asia in the 2015 Rising Stars Tournament of Champions. Even though Osaka was the lowest ranked player of all the participants, she strode to a sensational victory.

Major tournament successes

From the Tournament of Champions onwards, Osaka began to pick up success on the circuit. In 2016, she played her first final at a WTA tournament and was ranked 47th in the rankings at the end of the season. She took her first title at the age of 20, and that was from the Indian Wells tournament, where she beat Russia’s Kasatkina in the final.

The year 2018 was extremely successful for the Japanese tennis player, as she managed to sensationally dominate the US Open Grand Slam. She defeated Williams in the final in two sets and broke into the top ten of the overall rankings.

She was able to maintain her form until the end of the year and ended her breakthrough season in fifth place.

World No. 1 and mental problems

In 2019, Osaka continued her great performances. She managed to dominate the Australian Open at the start of the year, while successive successes in other tournaments led her to the world number one position. However, she was unable to defend her US Open title and finished the season in third place.

Since 2021, Naomi Osaka has been struggling not only in her tennis life, but rather in her personal life. At the French Open, where she could have challenged for the top spot in the rankings, she revealed that she was suffering from mental problems for the third year, which culminated in her withdrawal from the tournament.

At her home Olympics, she only played in the singles, where she was knocked out by Czech tennis player Vondroušová. The second half of the season she was rather absent due to psychological problems, thus dropping out of the top ten overall ranking.

She started the next year by finishing in the third round at the Australian Open. Since Osaka was defending her victory at this Grand Slam, the loss of points meant a drop to 84th place. A relatively well-known event is the BNP Paribas Open, where she dropped out in the second round after a poor performance. The Japanese tennis player left the court in tears after one of the fans yelled at her that she was “worthless”.

Source: Livesport, WTA rankings, CT Sport