Osaka putting the 10 in tennis

▶ How many Slams can young star win?

Just how good can Naomi Osaka be?

That’s the question after the 23-year-old Japanese world No.3 won her fourth career Grand Slam with victory at the 2021 Australian Open last weekend.

Osaka triumphed in straight sets over US player Jen Brady at Melbourne Park, though the scores will not tell the story of her having to dig deep to overcome the 25-year-old.

That fourth Slam victory matched a record set by all-time Slam winner Margaret Court, Monica Seles and Roger Federer, all of whom won their first four finals. Seles would win her first six.

Can Osaka match that run? Perhaps, but more importantly how many Slam wins could the Japanese-Haitian-Amercican win.

At least 10, said seven-time Slam winner Mats Wilander.

“I think she has 10 in her, minimum, I really do,” the Swede told Eurosport after Osaka saw Brady off for a second Australian Open to follow up her debut win in 2019.

“She was clearly the best player in this match and she looked so comfortable.

“There’s no way you can disturb her, and you just see the calm victory celebrations: That tells me she was expecting to win, and she is going to win a lot more.

“Of course, we know that motivation is important. Physically, she doesn’t move really well, but she’s so strong and she doesn’t look like she can get hurt very easily.

“She is very subdued when she wins, which means she wants to win more. I think the only question mark for her now is: Can she get comfortable on clay, and can she get comfortable on grass at Wimbledon?

“Because then there will be four majors she should be able to win. But at the moment she is the best hard-court player we have had in the women’s game since Serena Williams was at her best.

“I think we have to go back to the fact that she has never lost in the second week. Monica Seles, I think, won her first four Grand Slam finals, so I don’t know if she feels pressure, because pressure is built when you fail. Well, she doesn’t know what that feels like.

“We know when you are winning you don’t necessarily want to switch up your game too much, but there will be a day when she loses a bit of confidence. If you have a ‘B game’ then maybe that fall is not as severe and you only go away for a few tournaments.

Osaka is not putting any pressure on herself.

“I’m taking it in sections,” she said after Wilander’s comments were raised in the post-final press conference.

“Right now, I’m trying to go for five. You know, after five I would think about maybe dividing the 10, so maybe seven or eight. I like to take things not big picture. For me, I like to live in the moment.

“I know that the people that I’m playing against are the best players in the world, and, you know, if my time comes to win another Grand Slam, it will come.”

She has never got past the third round at either Roland Garros or Wimbledon but she wants to win on both clay and grass, she said.

“For me, I feel like I have to get comfortable on those surfaces,” Osaka said.

“That’s the key thing that, you know, I didn’t play juniors, so I didn’t grow up playing on grass at all.

“So I honestly think I’d have better luck on clay, because I think last year I didn’t play bad at all. It’s just something that I have to get more used to.”

She has bigger plans than just Slams – not unexpected for a player who has been more and more outspoken on social and racist justice issues over the course of the last year.

“I feel like the biggest thing that I want to achieve is,” Osaka said. “This is going to sound really odd, but hopefully I play long enough to play a girl that said that I was once her favorite player or something.

“For me, I think that’s the coolest thing that could ever happen to me.

“I think I have those feelings of, you know, watching my favorite players. Unfortunately I didn’t get to play Li Na, but, yeah, I just think that that’s how the sport moves forward.”

Li was a childhood hero of Osaka and the first Asian to win a singles Slam. She did so with the French Open in 2011 before adding another at the Australian Open in 2014.

The Chinese superstar, who was admitted to the Tennis Hall of Fame in 2019, has long spoken of Osaka in glowing terms.

“When she was playing tennis in Melbourne, I said to Dennis [her husband], ‘She’s very good. I think if she wants, 10 Grand Slams, easy to win,’” Li told CNN in 2019 of telling her husband how good the youngster was.

“I like she has like a poker face, doesn’t matter what happened on the court, she has same face.”

Poker face or not, now is the time for Osaka to gamble on the Slams that are not played on hard courts.

That means a win at either Wimbledon or the French Open, but why not?

The tennis world certainly rates her – as Wilander and Li have shown – and Osaka is finally catching up, not that she is letting on.

While the other career Slams can wait, there is the small matter of a home Olympics this summer.

“Everyone kind of knows the Olympics is a really big deal for me,” Osaka said when she was taking photos with the trophy on February 21. “It would be my first Olympics and for Japan. Tokyo, of course, would be a dream.

“But I … don’t want to put too much thought into it because I feel like I would overanalyze and put stress on myself because there’s still a ways to go.”