I started out liking Naomi Osaka. I remember a post-match interview she did a few years before she won the US Open, and thinking that she was a cute little thing with a weird little-girl voice. Even when she won the US Open last year in a storm of controversy and sh-tty chair-umpiring, I still liked her because none of it was her fault, not the umpiring, not Serena Williams’ meltdown, not the long history of institutionalized racism and sexism that had led to that moment. She cried when she accepted her trophy in New York as the crowd booed (they were booing the situation more than Osaka personally). She didn’t win any other titles until Melbourne this year, when she beat Petra Kvitova in the Australian Open final. Naomi Osaka: Big Match Player had arrived. She became #1 in the world. Then her world seemingly fell apart.
First she fired her coach, Sascha Bajin, the same coach who had worked with her throughout the three biggest titles of her career up to the point (AO, US Open, and Indian Wells). Then she just kept losing matches that she could have and should have won. She failed to defend her Indian Wells title. She spoke less about winning in her press conferences and spoke more about the search for happiness. She racked up a couple of smaller injuries and several multi-million endorsements. She lost early in the French Open. She lost in first round at Wimbledon. She lost her #1 ranking to Ash Barty. She cried during press conferences. And at some point, she went from soft-spoken introvert to the player who was infantilized by journalists and commentators, like a wayward, precocious child who couldn’t stop screwing up.
All of which to say, I get that she’s under a lot of pressure, and in some ways, she’s dealing with it as best she can. On the other side… she’s 21 years old (22 in October) and I wish people would stop treating her like a child, and I wish she would stop showing people that she wants to be treated that way. Osaka covers the August issue of Allure, basically as a preview of the American hardcourt season. She’s defending a lot of ranking points in the next two months. Will she crack under pressure even more? Or will she rise like a phoenix and defend her title? I don’t know. But this interview is definitely on-brand for her: she barely offers any personal information and I feel like half of what she says is a riddle.
On the 2020 Tokyo Olympics: “Definitely my intention is to play for Japan.”
On her childlike voice: “I feel like people just think that I tend to talk a bit strangely, and I also feel like I can come across very different to people…so I don’t know, I think it’s all about perception.”
Tennis is a rough sport on the body: “I wake up in the morning and all of my bones crack. I don’t think that’s normal.”
On talent & work: “There’s a certain point where talent isn’t useful anymore, and from there you’ve just got to want to win more than everyone else. I think that’s something I noticed from an early age, so that’s what I’ve been fortunate with. I mean, the way that I grew up and the circumstances that sort of surrounded me kind of forced me to think that way. My parents weren’t exactly the richest, so what am I going to do? I’m not really the smartest. I’ve been playing tennis my whole life, you know? So there’s nothing I can imagine myself doing. It’s either I have to be the best or I’m going to be homeless.”
Whether her path was decided for her: “By who? My parents or something? I think in the beginning, yes, for sure, but as I grew up, you know…I started thinking that those dreams, they’re things that I really want to accomplish. So yeah, I think it was more like a push.”
[From Allure]
Basically she sounds like one of those hyper-managed kids in the Disney machine and then they suddenly do a real Hollywood movie and their mind is blown. She was a relatively obscure figure two years ago, and so of course there’s a period of adjustment and I get that. I get that everything changed really fast for her. But this is a pointed observation: “There’s a certain point where talent isn’t useful anymore, and from there you’ve just got to want to win more than everyone else.” Does she want to win more than everyone else? Does she want to win at all? Because she hasn’t played like she wants to win for months now.
Cover courtesy of Allure, additional photo courtesy of Avalon Red.
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