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By Richard Pagliaro | Sunday, August 29, 2021

 
Naomi Osaka

Naomi Osaka launches defense of her US Open title on Monday night, conceding she's short on match play and facing some significant questions.

Photo credit: Jennifer Pottheiser/US Open

Music is Naomi Osaka’s pre-match muse.

When the third-seeded Osaka strides onto Arthur Ashe Stadium tomorrow night to launch defense of her US Open title vs. Marie Bouzkova, she’ll likely be wearing headphones turning up the intensity and muting the “noise that won’t help my game.”

More: Osaka, BodyArmor Refurbish Her Childhood Court in Queens

The four-time Grand Slam champion knows how to elevate on Grand Slam stages.

Sputtering through a summer that has seen her win just three matches since she withdrew from Roland Garros revealing she’s battled anxiety and depression, Osaka faces major questions in her quest to defend a Grand Slam title for the first time.

How will the 23-year-old Japanese respond to the pressure of her title defense and a challenging draw that could include a fourth-round clash vs. either 2016 US Open champion Angelique Kerber, who is coming off the Wimbledon semifinals, or 21st-seeded Coco Gauff, who pushed Osaka to three sets in Cincinnati and is a fan favorite in Flushing Meadows?

"I feel pretty confident with where I am right now," Osaka told the media in her pre-tournament press conference. "Of course I'm not, like, declaring that I'll do amazing here. For me, I'm the one-match-at-a-time like person. Yeah, hopefully it will work out in the end."

Another intriguing question: Osaka concedes she plays her best tennis when she has a cause so what will fuel her motivational fire in New York?

Remember, this was a woman once so shy and insecure around heer she avoided using the player locker room because she wasn’t fully convinced she belonged.

Last year, Osaka emerged as a leading voice in sport using her platform to support social and racial justice. Walking onto court throughout the 2020 Open, Osaka paid tribute to African American victims of violence—she’s worn the names of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, Trayvon Martin and Ahmaud Arbery—on her mask and spoke about how moved she was seeing a video from the families of Arbery and Martin expressing gratitude for her gesture of support.

In her run to the 2020 US Open title, Osaka drew strength playing for a bigger cause than herself. What will inspire her in this title defense? Osaka is interested to see how she will emotionally elevate.

“I would say definitely for me, I'm the type of player that plays better if I have a reason or if I have a goal or if I'm driven about something,” Osaka said in her pre-tournament presser. “Definitely in New York last year the biggest goal for me was just to push that message across. I feel like I did well there.

“Right now, I don't really have that big of a, like, message to push across at all. So it's going to be really interesting to see, like, what drives me. Of course, I'm a competitor and I want to win. There's that feeling of wanting to I guess do better than last year.”



Explosiveness and her skill making the strings sing when she's tuned into her game make Osaka so dangerous on hard court despite her recent lack of match play.

"Naomi is a pure ball-striker. When she has time to set up particularly after her first serve, she's one of the best first-serve, first-strike players I've ever come up against," world No. 1 Ash Barty said. "On a hard court, there's not a lot of variation on the bounce. She can set up, trust the bounce, and really swing through the line. I think that's what makes her so damaging on these courts."

Hall of Famer Pam Shriver says Osaka while Osaka’s recent struggles make her more vulnerable, she’s most formidable on major hard courts. Osaka has won 17 of her last 18 Flushing Meadows matches, including claiming two of the last three US Open crowns with her lone loss in three years coming to Olympic gold-medal champion Belinda Bencic in the 2019 fourth round.

“Obviously her play on a hard court, winning the four majors that she's won since 2018, finals US Open, where she handled a situation that was as crazy a situation ever in a final, she handled it beautifully. She's certainly going to be one to look out for,” Shriver told the media in an ESPN Zoom call to promote the network’s US Open coverage starting on Monday at noon on ESPN. “These last few months obviously have been extremely difficult…

"Osaka obviously has been having some struggles that she's come forward with. It's a little unpredictable. But she's going back to a place where she's won it twice. Usually when you have those kind of special memories, you can play some pretty good tennis.

“I expect her to play well. But I do have more questions going into this US Open than I would have had the last few months been smoother for Naomi.”



In her pre-tournament presser, Osaka sounded much more at peace with herself acknowledging candor cost her in Paris, but believes she’s learned from it and “I don’t feel the same situation will happen again.”

“Honestly, I feel like there's a lot of things that I did wrong in that moment, but I'm also the type of person that's very in the moment,” Osaka said when asked what she learned from her Roland Garros controversy. “Like whatever I feel, I'll say it or do it. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. I think there's a lot of things that I learned to do better.

“Of course, I don't feel the same situation will happen again. I would say maybe think it through a bit more in the way that, like, I didn't know how big of a deal it would become.”

Reconnecting with her roots may be the inspirational fuel Osaka seeks.

On Thursday, the four-time Grand Slam champion returned to her roots—the tennis courts at Detective Keith L. Williams Park in Jamaica, Queens where she and her older sister, Mari Osaka, grew up playing—to deliver a major makeover for the tennis community. Osaka, her sister Mari Osaka and BodyArmor Lyte refurbished the tennis court facilities as a way to bring its US Open partnership to life beyond the tournament and inspire young athletes in the local Queens community where Osaka got her start.




Born in Osaka, Japan to a Japanese mother and Haitian father, Osaka's first Grand Slam experience came as a kid growing up in Valley Stream, New York attending the US Open.

"I remember hitting on these courts a lot so I actually recognize a lot of people that came out here today," Osaka told the kids and community members who attend a clinic she gave. "It's really nice to see you guys.

"Just to see the courts kind of new and different from how I grew up, it's really amazing to see. I just really love this neighborhood when I was a kid. We used to have so many adventures, me and my sister. For me, just revisiting here and wanting to build up and do better for the community was very important for both of us."




Osaka knows in Queens, the birthplace of her tennis game, she’s never alone with her extended tennis family around.

Embracing her past last week, now Osaka faces the major challenge creating a happy homecoming in her US Open defense.

“It was definitely an incredible feeling. I haven't gone back there since I moved to Florida, so maybe around like eight or so. I would say the most, like, awesome part about it is that all of the people that I remembered from when I was a kid were still there,” Osaka said. “They all came out. They were all telling me to, like, call my mom and call my dad because they had so many things they wanted to tell them.

“Honestly, it felt like a big family. Everyone there used to take care of me as a kid. Just to see them all being healthy and happy was an incredible feeling.”


 

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