The sadness of tennis player Naomi Osaka
“I’m sorry it had to end like this”
Almost eight years ago, the then 20-year-old Naomi Osaka won the US Open by defeating her idol Serena Williams. You would think that such a first Grand Slam title is the moment when you completely lose it, but Osaka was mainly trying to hold back her tears behind her visor. The audience would have preferred to see Serena win her 24th Grand Slam and thus equal Margaret Court as the player with the most Grand Slam titles ever. During the match, Williams received several warnings from umpire Carlos Ramos, which led to one of the most famous disputes in tennis history. While Serena and the referee were at odds, Osaka watched it all from a distance. During the award ceremony, she even apologized to the booing audience. “I’m sorry it had to end like this,” she said. And right there, at that moment that should have been the highlight of her career, Osaka began the battle with depression and social anxiety.
According to the Williams blueprint
It gets an extra layer when you find out why Naomi even hit her first tennis ball. Serena Williams herself. Or rather, Naomi’s father. When Osaka was four years old, she moved from Japan to the United States. There, her father became fascinated by the story of Richard Williams, who trained his daughters Serena and Venus to become two of the best players in the world without having a tennis background himself. That seemed like a good idea to him too. “The blueprint was already there. I just had to follow it,” father Leonard François later said. And so Osaka literally followed in Serena’s footsteps. When Serena won her first Grand Slam, Naomi was just a one-year-old baby. She grew up watching her matches, looked up to her immensely, and later recounted how starstruck she was when she met her hero for the first time. And then the moment when everything comes together: Osaka wins her first Grand Slam, against exactly that same Serena.
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Victory off the court
As if that wasn't enough, Osaka also faced a lot off the tennis court. After the birth of her daughter Shai in July 2023, she experienced an “extremely bad” case of postpartum depression while thinking that it wouldn't happen to her because she knew the symptoms. During the first months, she said she felt “like a shell of myself.” While everyone around her seemed to live in color, her own world felt mostly gray. Osaka even mentioned that she thought she would be one of those athletes who wouldn't return to tennis after having a child. Ultimately, Shai turned out to be her biggest motivation to step back onto the court. However, her relationship with rapper Cordae did not survive that difficult period. At the beginning of 2025, the two, who had been together since 2019, announced that they were separating.
It's easy to get caught up in the rankings, the trophies, and the fabulous appearance looks that Naomi Osaka has behind her name. But sometimes it's not a bad idea to pause and consider the image of a young tennis player who is realizing her biggest dream, and then is not lying on the ground cheering as you would expect, but standing there – with her life's work in her hands – apologizing to an audience that actually wanted to see someone else win.
