Naomi Osaka was so nervous and so unaccustomed to the spotlight, that it was all she could do to keep her 5-foot-11 frame upright on the podium.
It was 2018, and Osaka, just 20 and painfully shy, had just won the biggest title of her young career at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells. The crowd, desert-dwelling retirees and sun-dressed, pleated-khaki weekenders who’d braved the traffic along the 10 freeway out of Los Angeles, were just getting acquainted with the upstart—a heavy-hitting Japanese-Haitian-American who most of them had never heard of.
“Ummmm, hello, I’m Naomi….oh, never mind,” she giggled. “This is probably going to be the worst acceptance speech of all time.”
Osaka was just embarking on a year that would see her climb to the very top of the tennis world. Come September, she would out-power the most powerful player in the history of the sport, 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams, in an emotion-packed US Open final—one that will be revisited for years to come.
We may yet have been acquainted on the sunny March afternoon in southern California, but we would soon come to know her well.
Osaka would capture her second consecutive major at the 2019 Australian Open and a Japanese superstar was born. She’s so in-demand that the now 22-year-old recently topped Forbes big-money list, becoming the highest-earning female athlete of all time. Winning titles and hawking products and services for everyone from Nike, All Nippon Airways and Nissin Food Groups to Citizen, Yonex and Wowwow, Osaka earned $37.4 million over the last 12 months via prize money and endorsements. (That’s $1.4 million more than Williams.)
With that kind of exposure comes a whole lot of eyeballs. In the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, Osaka said she felt obligated to use her newfound platform to bring awareness to the racial injustice experienced by people of color in America and across the world. As she said on her run to the 2020 US Open title, she felt as if she were “a vessel” that could be used for a call to action.
Yes, the No. 4 seed came to New York to win a title, her second at the US Open and her third major overall. But she came here to make a statement on an even larger scale, wearing a different name-adorned mask for every match, each one a callout to a Black victim of violence. She had seven masks in total, and with seven victories, managed to wear them all: Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, Ahmaud Arbery, Trayvon Martin, George Floyd, Philando Castile and Tamir Rice.
When, on Saturday, she lay on the court of the mostly-empty Arthur Ashe Stadium, relieved at having pulled off a tense 1-6, 6-3, 6-3 turnaround against the resurgent Belarusian Victoria Azarenka, it was title-winning evidence that a still soft-spoken competitor like herself could indeed balance the pressures of being both athlete and activist.
“The point is to make people start talking,” said Osaka, no longer the reluctant trophy-holder and speaker she was back in Indian Wells.
Her coach Wim Fissette was right. If anyone could pull it off, it was Osaka.
“I feel like definitely there were a lot of hard times, especially [with this year’s circumstances]. You sort of overthink a lot of things,” said Osaka, who became the first Asian player—man or woman—to capture three Grand Slam singles titles. “I think I just got through it because during quarantine, I wanted to set myself up to possibly win this tournament. I felt like I just worked so hard, I wanted to give myself an opportunity. And I wanted more people to know more names."
