Osaka’s biggest challenge: reigning again after becoming a mother and triumphing for the first time on clay

When she was still a teenager, Naomi Osaka seemed like she was going to take on the world and mark an era in tennis. The 18-year-old girl who shocked the planet in the 2018 US Open final by beating her idolized Serena Williams in two sets, one of the best tennis players in history, seeks to return to the racket elite this year after conquering four greats—Australian Open in 2019 and 2021 and US Open 2018 and 2020—, going through depression and becoming a mother last July. At 26 years old, the former world number one (right now she is 197th), 1.80 meters tall and pure power from the baseline, probably has before her the biggest challenge of her career: recovering after a maternity leave of 15 months that ended last January, when he returned to the courts to compete, and triumph on clay, the surface on which the Paris Olympic Games will be held this summer and on which he has never won a tournament.

“I see the Games very far away at the moment, but I would be delighted to play them. I think it’s really cool that they’re going to be on land. It is something that I have always wanted to conquer, so I hope to be able to obtain a medal,” the Japanese woman, who was born in the city that gives her her name on October 16, 1997, said this week at the Mutua Madrid Open and at the age of three He moved with his family to the United States. Osaka won on Wednesday in two sets in the first round of the Madrid Open against the Belgian Greet Minnen (69th in the ranking WTA), but this Thursday she lost to the Russian Liudmila Samsonova (17th) in three sets (6-2, 4-6, 7-5, 2h 24m) on the center court, the Manolo Santana stadium.

Although she has never triumphed on clay – at Roland Garros she has only reached the third round – Osaka’s goal is to finally do well on this surface. So far, she has played three matches this season on clay, but only won the first round match at Mutua — she also lost to the Italian Martina Trevisan (76th) a few days ago in the French tournament in Rouen. “I would like to win a tournament on dirt,” she said. In the goal is the French great, which begins on May 26, but above all the Olympic Games this summer in Paris, which will also be held at the Bois du Boulogne facilities. At the Tokyo Games, which were held in 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic and were played on hard courts, Osaka became the first tennis player in history to light the Olympic cauldron. She was then number two in the world, but she fell in the third round to the Czech Marketa Vondrousova.

The Japanese has been trying for weeks to improve her movements on clay, a surface on which she barely played as a child and on which it is difficult for her to slide. “There are many things I have to learn on land. I don’t even remember the last year she had played on this surface, I think it was 2022. I have a lot of work to do. I am a very impatient person, I hope that job comes quickly,” Osaka said this Thursday after losing to Samsonova. On Wednesday, after her victory, she celebrated that she had moved better, more fluidly, to thwart a couple of drop shots from her rival: “I slid to my right a couple of times quite well, so I’m delighted with that. I hope I can continue.”

In 2021, she experienced one of the most unpleasant episodes of her career at Roland Garros: she left the tournament after being sanctioned by the organization with a $15,000 fine (almost 14,000 euros) and threatened with expulsion after having announced that she would not appear before journalists. for a mental health issue. Osaka, whose father was Haitian and whose mother was Japanese, returned the following year, but lost in the first round after training for a week in Mallorca and trying to be inspired by Rafa Nadal, the king of the land (14-time champion in the French capital). Since then, she has not set foot on the clay of Paris again. “I’m watching a lot more clay court matches and I’m trying to do my homework as best I can, so I hope that by the time Roland Garros arrives I’ll be much better,” she said. “I think my remains have improved a lot. There are many things in my game that I am doing much better, but my results are not that good. It’s difficult to focus on improvements when you keep losing in the second round,” the Japanese, the only tennis player from her country to win a Grand Slam, said today after her defeat (Kei Nishikori reached the final of the US Open in 2014).

Osaka has been focused on recovering after motherhood for months. After the break, she reconfigured her team, with Belgian Wim Fissette again as coach, and rented a house in California to prepare work with her team again. In January she said that being a mother gave her another perspective: “When I am on the track it is as if I receive a special energy from knowing that I am a mother and that I have to become an inspiration for all the girls in the world. I want to do an important career for which Shai [su hija] I can feel proud when the years go by.” These weeks, away from her house, she has had no choice but to maintain contact with Shai through FaceTime (iPhone video calls). “That makes me a little sad, but overall I think I’m doing pretty well. I set a goal for myself and I want to make the most of my time here,” said Osaka, the tennis player with a thorn in the ground who wants to recover the level with which she led the world circuit.

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