Naomi Osaka

At 26 years old, Naomi Osaka has this physical status:

Osaka never competed on the ITF Junior Circuit, the premier international junior tour, and only played in a small number of junior tournaments at any age level. She instead skipped to the ITF Women's Circuit and played her first qualifying match in October 2011 on her 14th birthday. She then made her professional main-draw debut in doubles at her next tournament in March with her sister Mari. Meanwhile, she did not qualify for her first singles main draw until July in her seventh such attempt. Her best result of the 2012 season came at a $10K event in Amelia Island, where she lost to her sister in the semifinals. Osaka has never won a title at the ITF level, only managing to finish runner-up on four occasions. Her first two finals came at the $25K level, one of which was in June 2013 in El Paso, Texas. The other was in March 2014 in Irapuato, Mexico and included a victory over her sister.

In September 2013, Osaka turned professional shortly before turning 16 years old. She entered her first two qualifying draws on the WTA Tour that same month at the Challenge Bell in Quebec and the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo. The latter event was her first opportunity to compete professionally in Japan. The following summer, Osaka qualified for her first WTA Tour main draw at the 2014 Stanford Classic. In her tour level debut, she upset world No. 19, Samantha Stosur, in a tight match where she saved a match point in the second set tiebreak and came back from a 5–3 deficit in the third set. She was still just 16 years old and ranked No. 406 at the time. Osaka also won a match as a wildcard at the Japan Women's Open, her only other WTA main draw of the year. These victories helped her progress into the top 250 of the rankings before the end of the season.

Despite not winning another WTA Tour main-draw singles match in 2015, Osaka continued to climb up the rankings. She reached her two highest level ITF finals, the first at the $75K Kangaroo Cup in Japan and the second at the $50K Surbiton Trophy in the United Kingdom. Following these runner-up results, Osaka was ranked high enough to enter qualifying at the last two Grand Slam singles events of the year, Wimbledon and the US Open. She won her first match at the US Open, but was unable to qualify for either main draw. Nonetheless, Osaka had a strong finish to the year. In October during the WTA Finals, she won the Rising Stars Invitational four-player exhibition tournament, defeating heavy favorite and world No. 35, Caroline Garcia, in the final. Continuing to play in November, Osaka then reached the biggest final of her career at the WTA 125 Hua Hin Championships in Thailand. After a semifinal at a $75K event in Japan, she finished the year ranked No. 144.

Osaka began the season playing three tournaments in Australia. Her results during this stretch were good enough to bring her near the top 100, which allowed her to play in WTA Tour-level events all year. Most notably, she qualified for her first Grand Slam main draw at the Australian Open and made it to the third round. In particular, she upset No. 21, Elina Svitolina, in straight sets in the second round before losing to No. 16, Victoria Azarenka. Back in the United States, Osaka received a wildcard into the Miami Open, her first Premier Mandatory main draw. During the event, she won two matches including a victory over No. 18, Sara Errani. With this success, she progressed into the top 100 of the WTA rankings for the first time.

In the clay-court events leading up to the French Open, Osaka needed to qualify for every event she entered. She only managed to do so at a single event, the Charleston Open, where she lost her only match in the main draw. Nonetheless, Osaka was ranked high enough to be directly accepted into the main draw of the French Open. In her debut at the tournament, she recorded her only two clay-court match wins of the season. She also won the first set against No. 6 Simona Halep, but ultimately lost the match. She then did not play the grass-court season after suffering an injury shortly after the French Open.

Osaka returned to tennis in the middle of July. At the US Open in August, she reached the third round at a Grand Slam event for the third time that year. She upset No. 30 CoCo Vandeweghe in the first round before losing to No. 9 Madison Keys, in three sets. During her match against Keys, she had a 5–1 lead in the third set before ultimately losing in a tiebreak. After the tournament, Osaka began the Asian hardcourt season with two tournaments in Tokyo, first losing in the second round at the Japan Open. Having already reached her first two career WTA quarterfinals earlier in the year, she then made her breakthrough as a wildcard at the Premier level Pan Pacific Open. She upset No. 12 Dominika Cibulková and No. 20 Svitolina on the road to making her first WTA final at the age of 18. At the time, Cibulkova was the highest-ranked player she ever defeated. Additionally, she was the first Japanese player to contest the final at the event since Kimiko Date in 1995. Osaka ultimately finished runner-up to Caroline Wozniacki. Nonetheless, she entered the top 50 of the WTA rankings for the first time. At the end of the season, she was named the WTA Newcomer of the Year.

After her huge improvement the previous year, Osaka was unable to set a new career-high ranking in 2017. Nonetheless, she maintained a steady ranking throughout the season, rising no higher than No. 44 while falling no lower than No. 68, her year-end ranking. She did not win more than two main draw matches at any event all year.

Osaka's best tournament result of the season came at the Canadian Open, where she reached the round of sixteen as a qualifier. During the event, she upset No. 16 Anastasija Sevastova before needing to retire against world No. 1, Karolína Plíšková, due to an abdominal injury. She had won the second set against Plíšková. Her next best results of the year came at the last two major events of the season, where she made it to the third round at each of Wimbledon and the US Open. She had a strong debut at Wimbledon, upsetting No. 23 Barbora Strýcová, before losing to No. 11 Venus Williams. Her US Open was then highlighted by her first-round win against defending champion and No. 6, Angelique Kerber, the first top-ten victory of Osaka's career. However, her run was ended by veteran qualifier Kaia Kanepi. This was the second consecutive year she lost in the third round of the US Open, after having at least a one-break lead in the third set.

Osaka in particular struggled to play on clay courts. After winning her first two matches at the Charleston Open, she did not win another main-draw match on clay the remainder of the season. Osaka did well in her first full grass-court season on the WTA Tour, going 4–4 behind her performance at Wimbledon. Her biggest wins of the year all came on hardcourt. In addition to her results at the Canadian Open and the US Open, she also recorded a second top-ten victory over No. 5, Venus Williams, at the Hong Kong Open, her last tournament of the year.

Following her lack of improvement in 2017, Osaka hired Sascha Bajin to be her coach in the offseason. In their second tournament together, Osaka produced her career best result at a Grand Slam event. At the Australian Open, she reached the fourth round after defeating two top-20 players in Elena Vesnina and hometown favorite Ashleigh Barty, ultimately losing to world No. 1, Simona Halep. This result helped her return to the top 50 within the next month.

At the Indian Wells Open, Osaka had the next big breakthrough of her career. Having never won a professional title or made it past the third round at a Premier Mandatory event, she won the tournament convincingly, only dropping one set in the middle round of the tournament. In the quarterfinals and semifinals, she defeated two top-five opponents in Karolína Plíšková and Halep, the latter of which was her first victory over a current No. 1 player. She then closed out the tournament with a win in the final over fellow up-and-coming player Daria Kasatkina, making her the youngest champion at the event in ten years. With her first title, she surged past her previous career-high ranking to No. 22 in the world. Osaka played the following week as well at the Miami Open and extended her win streak by one additional match in her first meeting against her childhood idol Serena Williams, who was competing in just her second tournament back from maternity leave.

After her success in the early months of the season, Osaka had a rather quiet middle of the year. She reached the third round at both the French Open and Wimbledon, matching her best performance at each tournament. The closest she came to winning another tournament was on grass at the Nottingham Open, where she lost to top seed Barty in the semifinals.

Osaka did not have another breakthrough result until the US Open, where she won her second title of the year. Like at Indian Wells, she only dropped one set in the middle round of the event, this time to No. 20 Aryna Sabalenka. In the three early rounds, she only lost a total of seven games and notably recorded a double bagel victory against Aliaksandra Sasnovich. Osaka was drawn against Madison Keys in the semifinals, and was able to avenge her tough loss from the 2016 US Open to advance to the final. In the final, she defeated Serena Williams for the second time in 2018 to win her first major title. The match was marred by an on-court dispute between Williams and the umpire highlighted by Williams receiving a game penalty and boos from the crowd both during the match and the award ceremony. Osaka later said that the win was "a little bit bittersweet" and "it wasn't necessarily the happiest memory." Nonetheless, she became the first Japanese woman to contest a major singles final and the first Japanese Grand Slam singles champion.

Now ranked in the top ten, Osaka extended her win streak to ten matches by reaching the final at the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo for the second time in her career. Plíšková was able to end her win streak in the final. Osaka then reached the semifinals at the Premier Mandatory China Open. With her third consecutive deep run, she rose to a career-best ranking of world No. 4, matching the record of Kimiko Date and Kei Nishikori for the highest ranking held by a Japanese player in history. Osaka closed out the year by participating at the WTA Finals, where she was grouped with Sloane Stephens, Angelique Kerber, and Kiki Bertens. She lost all three of her round-robin matches, notably retiring against Bertens due to a hamstring injury to end her season. Osaka finished the year as the WTA Tour leader in prize money, having earned almost $6.4 million.

Osaka entered the Australian Open as the fourth seed and also one of eleven players in contention for the world No. 1 ranking. She made it to the final against Petra Kvitová, having beaten Hsieh Su-wei in the third round despite being one set, 2–4 and 0–40 down at one point. Anastasija Sevastova also won the first set against her in the fourth round, while No. 8 Karolína Plíšková pushed her to three sets in the semifinals. After Osaka won the first set in the final, Kvitová saved three championship points before breaking Osaka in back-to-back service games to win the second set. Nonetheless, Osaka recovered to win the championship. She was the first woman to win consecutive major singles titles since Serena Williams in 2015, and was the first player to follow up her first Grand Slam singles title with another at the next such event since Jennifer Capriati in 2001. She also became the first Asian player to be ranked No. 1 in the world in singles. Despite this title, she parted ways with her coach Sascha Bajin following the tournament.

Osaka struggled after the Australian Open. She lost in the fourth and third rounds at the two Premier Mandatory tournaments in March, the Indian Wells Open and the Miami Open. After beginning the clay-court season with a semifinal at the Stuttgart Open where she withdrew due to an abdominal injury, her best results were two quarterfinals at the Madrid Open and the Italian Open. She also withdrew from the latter due to a right hand injury. Osaka matched her best result at the French Open, losing to Kateřina Siniaková in the third round. During the grass-court season, Osaka lost in the early rounds to Yulia Putintseva at both tournaments she entered, including the first round at Wimbledon. As a result, she lost the No. 1 ranking to Ashleigh Barty.

Before the US Open, Osaka made the quarterfinals at the two Premier 5 tournaments in August, the Canadian Open and the Cincinnati Open, where she was defeated by Serena Williams and Sofia Kenin respectively. These performances helped her regain the No. 1 ranking so that she had the top seed at the US Open. Nonetheless, her title defense came to an end in the fourth round against Belinda Bencic, who defeated her for the third time during the year. She then fell to No. 4 in the world. Following the tournament, Osaka went back to having her father as her coach. This change had an immediate impact, as Osaka won her next two tournaments. First, she won the Pan Pacific Open in her hometown of Osaka, defeating Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the final. Two weeks later, she won the Premier Mandatory China Open. During the tournament, she defeated reigning US Open champion Bianca Andreescu in the quarterfinals and world No. 1 and reigning French Open champion Ashleigh Barty in the final, both in three sets after losing the first. This was Andreescu's first loss since March. These results brought her to No. 3 in the world. At the end of the season, Osaka qualified for the WTA Finals for the second consecutive year. However, after defeating Petra Kvitová in her first match, she withdrew due to injury.

Osaka only played four tournaments in 2020, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the tour shutdown, she lost to No. 2 Karolína Plíšková in a semifinal at the Brisbane International and Coco Gauff in the third round of the Australian Open, squandering a chance to serve for the match in the former. When the tour resumed, Osaka played the Cincinnati Open and the US Open, which were held in back-to-back weeks in New York. Osaka did not lose a match at either event. At the Cincinnati Open, she defeated four players ranked in the 20s before defaulting in the final against Victoria Azarenka due to a hamstring injury. Both Osaka and Azarenka reached the final again at the US Open, where Osaka became the first player to win a US Open women's singles final by coming from a set down since 1994. This was her second US Open title in three years. Following the US Open, Osaka skipped the French Open and ended her season because of her lingering hamstring injury.

During both of these tournaments in New York, Osaka drew attention for her activism. She had initially withdrawn from the Cincinnati Open before the semifinal to raise awareness for the police shooting of Jacob Blake, only staying in the tournament after they chose to support her cause by postponing the event for a day. At the US Open, Osaka walked onto the court for her seven matches wearing a different black mask, each of which with the name of an African American who had been killed in recent years often without significant repercussions.

Osaka was seeded third at the 2021 Australian Open. She recorded straight-set wins over Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Caroline Garcia, and Ons Jabeur, before defeating Garbiñe Muguruza in three sets in the fourth round despite facing match points during the third set (the only match in which she lost a set during the tournament). She went on to defeat Hsieh Su-wei in the quarterfinals, Serena Williams in the semifinals, and 22nd seed Jennifer Brady in the final to claim her second Australian Open title. She became one of only three players in the Open Era to win her first four Grand Slam finals, alongside Roger Federer and Monica Seles.

Osaka returned to the Miami Open as the second seed, making the quarterfinals for the first time. She lost the quarterfinal in a shock defeat to Maria Sakkari, winning just four games. As a result, Osaka missed out on regaining the No. 1 ranking.

Osaka was seeded second at the French Open. Shortly before the start of the tournament, she announced that she would not conduct her mandatory media assignments. After Osaka won her first match in straight sets and did not hold a press conference, she was fined $15,000 and threatened with rising levels of fines and expulsion. The following day, she announced her withdrawal from the tournament, citing mental health issues. Many fellow athletes and sponsors have voiced support for Osaka, with some noting a rarely discussed issue of mental health, although the overall reaction from the wider tennis community was mixed. On June 17, Osaka's agent announced that she would not participate in the upcoming Wimbledon Championships but would take part in the Tokyo Olympics.

Osaka would later return to action at the Cincinnati Open where she was defending finalist. She beat Coco Gauff in the second round but was upset by Jil Teichmann in the third round, both in three sets.

At the US Open, Osaka failed to defend her title, losing her composure and the match to the eventual tournament runner-up, Canadian Leylah Fernandez in the third round, despite serving for the match in the second set. During the match, Osaka threw her racket and received a code violation for hitting a ball into the stands. In her post-match press conference, Osaka announced another hiatus from the sport "for a while", revealing that winning did not make her happy anymore.

Osaka returned to competition at the Melbourne Summer Set 1 tournament seeded No. 1 and made the semifinals, before withdrawing due to an abdominal injury. Her next tournament was the Australian Open, where she was seeded 13th and attempting to defend her title. However, she was eliminated in the third round by Amanda Anisimova, in three sets. Osaka described being happy despite the loss and discussed steps she is taking to improve her mental health and have "more fun on the court".

She dropped 71 spots in the WTA rankings to No. 85 following the tournament, with the tournament absences in 2021 contributing to the drop.

In March, Osaka entered the Indian Wells Open where she beat Sloane Stephens in the first round, but lost to Veronika Kudermetova in straight sets in the second. Osaka was upset by a heckler in the crowd during the second round and was in tears during the match. Interviewed after the match, she compared her treatment to heckling at the tournament in 2001 that led the Williams sisters to boycott it for 13 years.

The following week, Osaka entered the Miami Open. She reached her first final since the 2021 Australian Open after defeating 22nd seed Belinda Bencic in the semifinals. Ranked 77 at the time, she became the lowest ranked finalist in the tournament's history. However, she lost the final to second seed Iga Świątek, in straight sets.

Following a right ankle injury at the Madrid Open, Osaka withdrew from the Italian Open. On May 23, she lost in the first round of the French Open to Anisimova.

Playing for the first time since the French Open, Osaka won her first-round match at San Jose against Zheng Qinwen in three sets, but lost in the next round to Coco Gauff, in straight sets. At the Canadian Open, Osaka retired from her first match against Kaia Kanepi due to back injury. Against home favorite Danielle Collins, Osaka started positive into the US Open but lost the first set in a tiebreak, and her first-round match in two sets. Her troubles continued at the 2022 Toray Pan Pacific Open where as the defending champion she withdrew in the second round citing abdominal pain, having played only one game in her first round match against Daria Gavrilova who retired due to knee injury.

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