Naomi Osaka won a thrilling, come-from-behind three-set match to win the 2020 US Open on Saturday. It was her second Open title and third Grand Slam tournament championship in three years, which isn’t bad considering she’s just 22.
It isn’t just her tennis that’s drawn attention to Naomi over the last three weeks, however. The Covid-19 pandemic wrecked havoc on the tennis world, canceling Wimbledon and postponing the French Open. This left players with an empty summer calendar, which Naomi decided to fill by speaking out in support of social justice.
It’s difficult to overstate her influence. Naomi is currently the highest single-year paid female player ever, earning $37 million in tournament winnings and endorsements from corporations including Nike, Nissan, Shisheido and Yonex, a Japanese sports equipment manufacturer.
She’s a significant presence on social media, with followers numbering in the millions, and recently wrote an op-ed for Esquire magazine about social activism. It’s a subject she cares about deeply, given her own place in the world.
Naomi was born in Japan on Oct. 16, 1997. Her father is Haitian and her mother is Japanese; when she was three, the family, including her older sister, Mari, moved to Long Island, New York to live with her father’s parents.
After watching Venus and Serena Williams in the 1999 French Open, Naomi’s father took his two daughters to the local tennis courts and, despite never having played the game himself, began teaching them to play tennis.
The family moved to Florida in 2006 to give Naomi and Mari better training opportunities. They worked with private coaches after the United States Tennis Association, which typically invites young prospects to its exclusive Florida facilities, showed no interest.
When she was 13, Naomi decided to skip junior tennis and instead opted to compete at the women’s level. She reached her first World Tennis Association singles final in 2016, and two years later won her first WTA final at 18. She dropped just one set in that tournament and was later named WTA Newcomer of the Year.
Her first Grand Slam victory came at the 2018 US Open against Serena Williams after again losing just one set the entire tournament. She became the first Japanese player to win a Grand Slam title.
The title, however, was bittersweet. The match ended on a game penalty against Williams, who Naomi considers a personal hero, after a dispute with the umpire. The crowd booed the result, and continued booing through the awards ceremony despite Williams appealing for the crowd to cheer Naomi.
“It wasn’t necessarily the happiest memory,” Naomi told the BBC.
Since then she’s won a Grand Slam singles title every year, including back-to-back titles at the 2018 US Open and 2019 Australian Open. She is the No. 1 ranked player in the world, the first Asian player to hold that ranking in singles.
Raised in a mixed-race home, Naomi grew up identifying with several cultures, but says she always considered herself Japanese first. She officially relinquished her US citizenship in 2019 to comply with Japan’s Nationality Act, which requires dual citizens to pick a country before they turn 22. She hopes to represent Japan at the Tokyo Olympics, which will now take place in 2021.
When the pandemic hit earlier this year, Naomi admits tennis was no longer her sole focus. In her essay for Esquire, Naomi explains how her perspective changed:
“In the past few months, I’ve re-evaluated what’s actually important in my life. It’s a reset that perhaps I greatly needed. I asked myself, “If I couldn’t play tennis, what could I be doing to make a difference?” I decided it was time to speak up.”
Naomi joined Black Lives Matter protests this summer, and traveled to Minneapolis to protest the death of George Floyd. In August she opted not to play the semifinal match of the Western & Southern Open Tournament to protest the police shooting of James Blake; her decision prompted tournament organizers to pause play for one day to acknowledge police brutality and racial inequality.
“Before I am [an] athlete, I am a Black woman. And as a Black woman I feel as though there are much more important matters at hand that need immediate attention, rather than watching me play tennis,” she said on Twitter.
Before each of her seven matches at the US Open, Naomi wore a face mask with the name of an African-American man or woman shot by police in the United States. In response, family members of two of the victims taped video messages thanking her, which ESPN aired for her during a post-match interview. They brought her to tears.
Apart from being a distraction from tennis, Naomi’s activism now seems to inspire it, as she said on Twitter following Saturday’s win.
“I would like to thank my ancestors because every time I remember their blood runs through my veins I am reminded that I cannot lose.”
Image: Naomi Osaka Instagram