Naomi Osaka

Naomi Osaka is a Japanese player born in Osaka to a Haitian father and a Japanese mother, and raised in the United States from the age of three. She and her sister were coached by their father, who taught himself the game from instructional videos after watching the Williams sisters.

Her tennis is built on the serve and the first strike behind it, a game suited to hard courts, where all four of her major titles were won: the US Open in 2018 and 2020, the Australian Open in 2019 and 2021. The first arrived in a New York final against Serena Williams remembered as much for the crowd and the officiating as for the result. She lit the cauldron at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

She withdrew from the 2021 French Open rather than fulfil media obligations, disclosing her struggles with anxiety and depression, and the conversation that followed changed how tournaments handle player mental health. She returned to the tour in 2024 after the birth of her daughter.

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