Sweat, bagels and making of a star
NEW YORK: In an age of robotic press conferences where players are staying focussed and taking it one match at a time, Naomi Osaka breezes in, confesses to being fond of sweating, eating 500 bagels a day and having only one friend.
It’s all peppered with liberal doses of ‘likes’, ‘you knows’ and ‘stuff’.
And it made her the breakout star of the 2018 US Open where on Saturday she became first Japanese to win a Grand Slam title with a 6-2, 6-4 win over childhood idol Serena Williams in a controversial final.
“It was always my dream to play Serena in the US Open finals,” she said before turning to the American on the trophy podium. “I’m really grateful I was able to play with you, thank you.”
Osaka wasn’t even two years old when Williams won the first of her six US Opens in 1999.
Born on October 16, 1997 in — appropriately — Osaka, Japan, she was still a year away from moving to the United States on a permanent basis.
Her Haitian father Leonard met and married her mother Tamaki having decamped to Japan from New York where he had studied.
Now based in Boca Raton, Florida, Osaka has dual Japanese-american citizenship.
It’s a status that could help explain what her coach Sascha Bajin describes as her innocence. When Osaka performs media duties with her own national press, she takes questions in Japanese but replies in English, apologising for not knowing the appropriate word when she does resort to her mother tongue.
Despite that she is careful not to be seen as disrespectful.
SUPER-AWESOME JAPAN
“You go to Japan, everything is totally awesome and you’re having the time of your life,” she says.
“Every day you go out and you eat good food and stuff.
“When I go to Japan, I don’t feel like I’m at home. I feel like it’s a super-awesome extended vacation that I don’t want to leave.”
Despite being a relative rookie on tour, Osaka has developed into a big-stage player.
Standing an impressive 1.80m (5ft 11in), she made her Grand Slam debut at the 2016 Australian Open, coming through qualifying to make the third round where it took former champion Victoria Azarenka to stop her.
Current number one Simona Halep halted her progress at the French Open in the third round that year while at the US Open, she gave up a 5-1 lead in the final set to lose to Madison Keys, the player she beat to make Saturday’s final.
Before this year’s trip to New York, she registered her best Slam run at the Australian Open in January where she made the last 16. So, it wasn’t a surprise when her first WTA title came at one of the non-slam’s grandest stages, the prestigious Indian Wells event. Like Williams, Osaka has enjoyed a sibling rivalry although nowhere near as intense as Serena and Venus.
Big sister Mari Osaka is also a professional. Victory on Saturday earned Naomi USD 3,800,000 but she remembers the days when her older sister was the best player in the Osaka household.
INJURED NADAL TO MISS DAVIS CUP SEMI-FINAL
MADRID: Rafael Nadal will miss Spain’s Davis Cup semi-final against France next weekend due to the knee injury that forced him to retire at the US Open, the Spanish tennis federation said Saturday. He will be replaced by world number 52 Albert RamosVinolas for the September 14-16 clash as Spain attempt to reach their first final since 2012.