Osaka, Naomi (1997- )

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    The Notable Comebacks at the Australian Open

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    After extended layoffs, Naomi Osaka, Angelique Kerber and others are back on the court.A comeback provides no guarantee of success, but few sports provide more comebacks than professional tennis.They are arriving wave after wave, particularly in the women’s game, where returning to action after maternity has become more common.After the WTA stars Elina Svitolina and Caroline Wozniacki came back last season, the trend is continuing in 2024, with Naomi Osaka and Angelique Kerber, both former No. 1 players and multiple major champions.Both are new mothers who have been out of the game for more than a year and both will be in the draw as the 2024 season begins in earnest on Sunday with the Australian Open, the year’s first Grand Slam tournament, which Kerber won in 2016 and Osaka in 2019 and 2021.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      At the U.S. Open, Coco Gauff and Company Stake Their Claim

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      Last year’s U.S. Open focused on goodbyes. This year, Gauff, the new singles champion, along with Ben Shelton, Frances Tiafoe and Taylor Fritz, burst through the front door with plans to stay.Led by Coco Gauff and a cast of charismatic upstarts, tennis hit a sweet spot at this year’s U.S. Open with a diverse blend of old and right now, signaling the game is freshly and firmly energized as it enters a new era.No Serena Williams. No Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal.No problem.True enough, Novak Djokovic, who won the 24th major title of his career on Sunday by beating Daniil Medvedev in the men’s singles final, is still performing his magic act. But conventional thinking contended that tennis would be in trouble when the legendary champions who propped up the professional game for roughly the past two decades began leaving the game en masse.At this tournament, the commanding arrival of Gauff, who won the women’s singles title Saturday evening, along with memorable performances by Ben Shelton and Frances Tiafoe, proved that thinking wrong.At the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, a quartet of legends no longer stifled the game, overshadowing the sometimes stalled forward motion of the young players coming behind. You could feel it on the grounds, which filled with so many spectators that it often appeared there was no space to move without bruising a shoulder. This year’s event set attendance records nearly every day.“It’s incredibly invigorating to see a shift in personalities,” said Kate Koza, a Brooklynite and regular at the Open since 2016, echoing a sentiment I heard repeatedly during the event’s two-week run. “We’re not just seeing the same faces with the same mythical back story.”Tennis is changing, and no player embodied that more than the 19-year-old Gauff, who, ever since she burst onto the scene four years ago with a first-round win over Venus Williams at Wimbledon, appeared destined for this moment.Gauff overcome with emotion after beating Aryna Sabalenka in the women’s singles final.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesIn these two weeks at the U.S. Open, she grew entirely into herself. Her dutiful parents — ever at her side all these years on tour, with her father as coach — gave her extra freedom and fell just enough into the background. Gauff thrived, making clear that she is now her own woman. Think of how she demanded that her new coach, Brad Gilbert, tone down his chatterbox instructions during her fourth-round struggle against Caroline Wozniacki.“Please stop,” she instructed, adding a firmness that showed she was the one to dictate her action at this event. “Stop talking!”At Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens, she commanded the stage.She leaned into her speed and improving forehand to win four three-set showdowns during the tournament and played like a wily veteran in the most heart-pounding moments.She gained energy from the crowd — look, there’s Barack and Michelle Obama, and over there, Justin Bieber. “I saw pretty much every celebrity they showed on that screen,” she said, adding that she embraced the moment and vowed “to win in front of these people.”As she scorched a final passing shot past Aryna Sabalenka to take the title, falling to her back and then kneeling to soak in the moment through tears, Gauff claimed eternal space in the collective memory. Watching from a dozen rows back from center court, I felt goose bumps and shivers. The massive stadium shook and swayed, most of the 23,000 fans inside the stadium on their feet, cheering and chanting. They wanted this moment, this champion, this fresh start.Since Serena Williams won her first major title as a 17-year-old at the 1999 U.S. Open, the Open has had other Black champions. Her sister Venus in 2000 and 2001. Sloane Stephens in 2017. Naomi Osaka, who is Black and Asian, in 2018 and 2020.But Gauff is the first in a new era — a new champion in a new tennis world — one without the shadow of Serena. The torch has been passed.Sure, most fans hated to see the men’s No. 1 seed, Carlos Alcaraz, the Wimbledon champion, go down in an upset to Medvedev in the semifinals. The dream matchup had been a championship between Alcaraz and Djokovic, possessors of the hottest rivalry in men’s tennis.But if we’ve learned anything from the lockdown grip four genius players have had on tennis, it is that the expected course eventually becomes monotonous. Look at it this way: If Djokovic and Alcaraz finally face each other at the U.S. Open, the fact that they were barely denied a Flushing Meadows duel in 2023 will make their matchup that much sweeter.Last year’s U.S. Open, with its send-off celebration of Serena’s retirement and career, turned the page. This year’s tournament closed the book and put it back on the shelf.Ben Shelton’s sensational run at the U.S. Open lasted into the semifinals, where he lost to Novak Djokovic.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesYou could feel the exuberance in the air from the start, an energy that told a story: Djokovic remains — same as ever — but everyone else in the two fields seemed liberated by losing the shadow of Serena, Nadal and Federer.The men’s quarterfinals featured not only Alcaraz but two resurgent Americans in their mid-20s, Taylor Fritz and Frances Tiafoe, a fan favorite for his willingness to connect with the crowd.As if to herald the fact that Black players are a budding, booming force in both the men’s and women’s game, Tiafoe and Shelton became the first African American men to face each other in the final eight of a major championship.That wasn’t the only notable footnote. The fast-rising Shelton, 20, was the youngest American to reach a U.S. Open semifinal since 1992. He walloped Tiafoe to get there, wowing crowds with 149-mile-per-hour serves and in-your-face competitiveness that showed he wouldn’t back away from any challenge — even if that challenge was Djokovic.After beating Shelton in a hard-fought, straight-sets win to advance to the men’s final, Djokovic mimicked the celebratory gesture Shelton had flashed throughout the tournament after victory — an imaginary phone to the ear, which he then slammed down, as if to say, “Game, set, match, conversation over.”The wise master remains, still willing to give an education to the young ones for a bit longer. More

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      Naomi Osaka Makes U.S. Open Return. But Not for Tennis.

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      Osaka, the four-time Grand Slam singles champion, has taken breaks from tennis for her mental health and to start a family, but she is aiming to compete again in 2024.Naomi Osaka didn’t bring any rackets with her when she arrived at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on Wednesday afternoon. Osaka had no plans to play tennis.“For me, coming back here, it means a lot,” Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam singles champion, said. “It’s like seeing an old friend that you haven’t seen in a long time.”Osaka was speaking in the main news conference room on Wednesday inside Arthur Ashe Stadium. She knows it well. It’s where she got to field questions from reporters on some of her best occasions, like her U.S. Open championships in 2018 and 2020. It’s also where she has been during low moments, including a first-round exit at last year’s tournament.“There were some tears shed,” Osaka said about the room. “A lot.”On Wednesday, Osaka had returned for a panel with Michael Phelps, the American swimmer who stands as the most decorated Olympian ever; Dr. Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general; and Dr. Brian Hainline, the chief medical officer of the N.C.A.A. and the chairman of the United States Tennis Association board.Michael Phelps, the decorated Olympic swimmer, said in the past he trained more intensely instead of reaching out for help with mental health issues.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesThe topic of the panel, mental health and sports, is one that Osaka has spoken about often since she cited mental health concerns in her withdrawal from the French Open in 2021. Her exit then led to a break from tennis.Osaka, who turned pro in 2013 as a teenager and came to be seen as the heir apparent to Serena Williams, is away from tennis now, too. In January she announced she was pregnant but planned to play in the 2024 Australian Open. She gave birth to her daughter in July, calling it on Instagram “a cool little intermission.”On Wednesday, Osaka, 25, said she had plenty of time to reflect during her most recent leave from the sport.“It definitely made me appreciate a lot of things that I took for granted,” she said.Osaka did not say when she planned to return to tennis during the panel, but she later told ESPN in an interview that she had designs on playing in 2024, adding that she has been training and should be hitting balls soon.Speaking back in that room, Osaka alluded to the idea of having a long career.“I just remember watching the Australian Open and being very devastated because I’ve never missed an Australian Open,” Osaka said. But while watching, Osaka said, she thought about how late Serena and Venus Williams played into their careers.Serena Williams, who retired at last year’s U.S. Open, played until she was 40. Venus Williams, 43, played at this year’s tournament, losing in the first round of singles.“I was thinking I probably no way will ever play at their age,” Osaka said. “But sitting here, I’m like, you know what? I might do that.”Osaka said pregnancy gave her a lot of time to think, and that she felt isolated at times. She had to force herself to ask for help.“I actually felt lonely during my pregnancy just because I felt like I wasn’t able to do a lot of things,” she said.She added: “Normally I’m thinking, ‘If I’m going to be an independent woman, then I’m not going to ask anyone for help. Whenever something happens, just take it on the chin.’ But then I got to a place where I needed to ask for help.”For decades, many athletes have been reluctant to share their struggles with their mental health. It’s especially the case for professionals, whose jobs require them to push their bodies to perform at the highest level. But in recent years, athletes have gradually become more open about discussing mental health. Besides Osaka, they include the gymnast Simone Biles, the basketball star Kevin Love, and, in tennis, Amanda Anisimova, the young American once ranked in the top 25 who in May cited mental health concerns in deciding to step away from the sport.Among Olympians, Phelps has also led a push to speak out on mental health.Osaka spoke on a panel with Michael Phelps, third from left; Dr. Vivek Murthy, left, the surgeon general; and Brian Hainline, fourth from left, the chief medical officer of the N.C.A.A. and the chair of the United States Tennis Association board.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesPhelps, who has also faced mental health issues, said that, like for Osaka, working through those problems required realizing he had to reach out and ask for help.“I learned that I couldn’t do it all by myself,” Phelps said.After winning six gold medals at the 2004 Athens Games, Phelps entered what he described as a “post-Olympics depression.” But instead of reaching out to someone for help, Phelps said, he compartmentalized his issues by swimming and training more.It wasn’t until about 2014, Phelps said, when he hit a “breaking point.”“I decided that something had to change,” he said. “So for me, I had to become vulnerable for the first time in my life.While Osaka didn’t say exactly when she’ll play again, when she returns the difficulties of life on tour will follow, such as time away from family and the pressure of competing in an individualistic sport. But this time, Osaka said she will be more comfortable seeking help when she needs it.Osaka said that she had two friends she counts on when she is dealing with loneliness.“I know I can reach out to them at any time, and I think it’s really important,” she said. “You’re not alone in anything.” More

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      A Field Guide to the 2023 U.S. Open

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      With the grass and clay seasons over, the eyes of the tennis world now turn to Flushing Meadows.The U.S. Open, played from Aug. 28 to Sept. 10 in Queens, is the last Grand Slam tournament of the calendar year, giving players one more chance to win a major title. Each year, the tournament creates a buzz around New York City, and it never fails to excite — or wreak havoc on sleep schedules, with marathon matches that can go deep into the night.At last year’s U.S. Open, Serena Williams largely stole the show during the first week as she closed out her storied career by reaching the third round of the singles draw. This year, without Williams, Roger Federer and an injured Rafael Nadal, a largely younger generation of tennis stars is looking to make a deep run in the tournament.Both of the 2022 singles winners are back in the field: Iga Swiatek, the 22-year-old from Poland and a four-time Grand Slam tournament champion, and Carlos Alcaraz, the 20-year-old Spanish phenom with two Grand Slam singles titles under his belt. But while Alcaraz and Swiatek are among those favored to win, you never know when a couple of teenagers could surprise everyone and reach the final.Here’s what to know about this year’s U.S. Open.How can I watch?In the United States, ESPN will carry the action from the first ball of the day until late into the night. Over Labor Day weekend, ABC will also broadcast some matches.Around the world, other networks airing the tournament include TSN in Canada, Sky Sports in Britain, Migu in China, Sky Deutschland in Germany, SuperTennis in Italy and Movistar in Spain.Kids lined up for autographs from Frances Tiafoe in Arthur Ashe Stadium after he practiced on Friday.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times‘Stand clear of the closing doors, please.’For those heading out to the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, the No. 7 train, which makes stops in Manhattan at Times Square and Grand Central Station, is one of the easiest ways to get to the U.S. Open.The No. 7 train stops at Mets-Willets Point station, which leads directly to the tennis grounds. (If you see a bunch of fans in Mets gear, turn around because you’ve gone the wrong way.) It also includes an express route, which makes fewer stops than the local trains, and on certain nights an even faster “super express train” is offered back to Manhattan. Another option is to take the Long Island Rail Road to the Mets-Willets Point station.Parking is also available at the tournament, along with designated ride-share spots. But beware: Heavy traffic often means that driving either in or out of Manhattan can take longer than a train ride.Baseball fans and tennis fans will mingle at the Mets-Willets Point subway station.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesCan’t get a ticket to Arthur Ashe Stadium?There is something electric about a night match under the lights of Arthur Ashe Stadium. The court is reserved for the tournament’s top-billed players, who are spurred on by raucous, Honey Deuce-fueled crowds. But a seat in Arthur Ashe can be pricey.Other options include buying a ticket to Louis Armstrong Stadium or the Grandstand, which both host a number of often-underrated matches and offer a closer look at the action. There isn’t a bad seat in either venue.Perhaps one of the best — and more laissez-faire — ways to enjoy the tournament is to buy a grounds pass and hop around from court to court. A grounds pass also offers first-come, first-serve access to the general admission seating in Armstrong and the Grandstand.Don’t sleep on those numbered outer courts, either. At last year’s tournament, Aryna Sabalenka, who won this year’s Australian Open, was down — 2-6, 1-5 — in a second-round match against Kaia Kanepi. The match seemed all but over until Sabalenka fought back to win the second set and eventually the third. Where did this epic comeback go down? Court 5, over by the practice courts.Spectators watched qualifying matches inside the Grandstand on Friday.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesWho’s playing?Novak Djokovic is back. After missing last year’s U.S. Open because he was not vaccinated against the coronavirus, as American travel restrictions required of foreign visitors at the time, the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion returns to seek a 24th title.Djokovic will enter the tournament in strong form after winning the Western & Southern Open in Ohio last week against Alcaraz. In the final, Djokovic was down a set, and he appeared to be suffering badly from the heat, but he rallied and forced a third set, winning on a tiebreaker.In addition to Alcaraz and Swiatek, other big names in this year’s tournament include Sabalenka of Belarus, Ons Jabeur of Tunisia, Daniil Medvedev of Russia, Casper Ruud of Norway and Elena Rybakina, who represents Kazakhstan. Some of the top-seeded American players include Frances Tiafoe, Jessica Pegula, Coco Gauff and Taylor Fritz.Frances Tiafoe made a deep run in last year’s U.S. Open.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesKeep an eye on these story lines.Elina Svitolina, a U.S. Open semifinalist in 2019, missed last year’s tournament while taking time off for the birth of her daughter and raising money for Ukraine, her home country, after it was invaded by Russia. Since returning to tennis this year, Svitolina made an impressive run to the quarterfinals of the French Open, and she defeated Swiatek to reach the semifinals of Wimbledon. (By the way, don’t be surprised if you see Svitolina or any Ukrainian player refuse to shake hands with Russian or Belarusian players.)Gauff, the 19-year-old who was a French Open finalist in 2022, enters the U.S. Open having won two titles this month, in Washington, D.C., and Ohio. In the semis of the Western & Southern Open, she was finally able to beat Swiatek, having lost the previous seven matches against her.Caroline Wozniacki and Venus Williams were both awarded wild-card slots at this year’s U.S. Open. Wozniacki, a one-time Grand Slam singles champion from Denmark, is back after retiring from tennis in 2020 to start a family. Williams, a seven-time Grand Slam singles champion, shows no signs of stopping at 43.On the men’s side, Andy Murray, 36, is another veteran who is keeping on with three Grand Slam titles in tow, and John Isner, the 38-year-old American, was awarded a wild card for what he said will be his final tournament.Someone else to keep tabs on is Jennifer Brady, the 28-year-old American who reached the 2021 Australian Open final. After missing nearly two years with injuries, Brady is back on the tennis scene.Jennifer Brady made her return to tennis this year.Jacob Langston for The New York TimesSome big names are missing this year.One of the most notable absences will be Rafael Nadal, the 22-time Grand Slam singles champion. He is out for the rest of the year with an injury and is eyeing a return next year.This year’s tournament will also lack some recent U.S. Open champions: Naomi Osaka, who won the U.S. Open in 2018 and 2020, will miss this year’s tournament after giving birth to a daughter this summer. Emma Raducanu, who won the 2021 U.S. Open women’s title as a qualifier without losing a single set, is recovering from minor procedures on both hands and an ankle. Bianca Andreescu, the 2019 U.S. Open champion, is out this year with a small stress fracture in her back.Simona Halep, a two-time Grand Slam singles champion, was withdrawn from the tournament because she received a provisional suspension in October after testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug during last year’s U.S. Open.Nick Kyrgios, the fiery Australian, withdrew from the men’s draw in early August. Kyrgios, who has played in only one tournament this year, wrote on Instagram that a wrist injury was keeping him out of the U.S. Open.Naomi Osaka at last year’s U.S. Open.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesMark your calendars.The action begins on Monday, with the first, second and third rounds scheduled through Sept. 2. The round of 16 starts on Sept. 3, followed by the quarterfinals on Sept. 5 and 6.The women’s semifinals are scheduled for Sept. 7, with the men’s semifinals on Sept. 8. The women’s final will be played Sept. 9, and the tournament wraps up with the men’s final on Sept. 10.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times More

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      Jennifer Brady, Finally Healthy, Tries to Get Back to Work

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      Even when the big success finally came, it hardly came easily for Jennifer Brady.She made her breakthrough at the 2020 U.S. Open near the height of the coronavirus pandemic, reaching the semifinals amid strict public health measures and the silence of a vast Arthur Ashe Stadium without any paying spectators.When she backed that performance up four months later by reaching the Australian Open final, she did it after spending two weeks in hard quarantine in a Melbourne hotel. She smacked tennis balls against a mattress that she had propped against a wall and pedaled a stationary bike in the bathroom with the door closed and a hot shower running to try to replicate the tournament’s often steamy conditions.Her deep run was a remarkable, resilient effort that put her on the brink of the top 10 of the singles rankings. But as the world and her sport slowly returned to something closer to normal, Brady was nowhere to be seen on tour.She was out of action for nearly two years with a chronic foot condition and a knee injury that, combined, sometimes left her, in her words, “in a very dark place,” curled up on the floor in tears, even looking at her troublesome left foot on occasion and wishing she could “just chop it off.”Brady, who had played her last competitive match in August 2021, returned to action last week for an International Tennis Federation satellite tournament in Granby, Quebec, winning a round before losing in straight sets to Himeno Sakatsume, a Japanese player ranked 223rd.Brady plans to return to the main WTA Tour next week in Washington, D.C., for the DC Open.“It was unbelievable, just being out there,” Brady said in a telephone interview from Granby. “Just engaging and just having a crowd there, and people enjoying good tennis. I definitely missed this. I didn’t think I would be as comfortable as I was. I’m happy I was able to show people that I’m still here.”‘It Seems Like There’s a Lot of Opportunity’Though Brady no longer had a WTA ranking after her long layoff, she has a protected ranking that will allow her entry into 12 tour-level events. That does not count wild cards, and given her past success, she is likely to receive several, although she plans to use her protected ranking to enter the U.S. Open next month.Brady said she missed playing in front of a crowd during her time away.Jacob Langston for The New York TimesWith a thunderous forehand that often led her to practice with boys in her youth, Brady, 28, was long considered one of the most promising American players. She knows there are no guarantees of a successful comeback. She was aiming initially to return for the French Open in May. She had her hotel room and plane ticket booked but then suffered a new injury, a bone bruise in her right foot, in her final practice session before her planned departure.As she returns this month, she senses an opening. She avoided watching much pro tennis in her long absence but she is well aware that Marketa Vondrousova recently became the first unseeded woman to win a Wimbledon singles title.“The women’s game right now, it seems like anybody can win a Grand Slam tournament,” Brady said. “It seems like there’s a lot of opportunity.”Brady no longer has a personal coach and is traveling instead with Kayla Fujimoto Epperson, a physical therapist. But as she prepared for her comeback in Orlando, she worked daily with Ola Malmqvist, the head of women’s tennis at the U.S.T.A., who has known Brady since she was a standout junior.“I just really, really wish that she gets the chance to put her feet into everything again and see what happens,” Malmqvist said. “I think in her mind she definitely feels she can compete with the very best, and I hope she can stay healthy enough and practice enough. She’s not going to go four hours a day anymore because of her body, but she can still do enough to get the physicality she needs.”The challenge for Brady has been learning to hold back. “It’s almost like I don’t trust myself,” she said. “I realized it’s more about staying healthy and training smarter instead of harder.”Brady has been working with Ola Malmqvist, the head of women’s tennis at the U.S.T.A.Jacob Langston for The New York TimesShe left U.C.L.A. after her sophomore year to turn professional in 2015. But she did not start to soar until she moved her training base to Germany in late 2019 and began working with the German coach Michael Geserer, who favored a high-volume, high-intensity approach.She returned from the tour’s five-month pandemic hiatus in August 2020 and won her opening tournament in Lexington, Ky., foreshadowing her deep run to a U.S. Open semifinal with Naomi Osaka, the eventual champion.She also lost to Osaka in the 2021 Australian Open final and then retreated to her hotel room again, emotionally and physical drained.“I just closed the blackout curtains, and I just watched Netflix for, like, three days straight,” she said. “It just hit me.”Instead of taking a break, she followed her plan with Geserer and went to the tournament in Doha, Qatar, in February 2021. “I just didn’t want to be there,” she said. “I love competing, but I just didn’t want to compete. Mentally, I was absolutely fried.”After losing to Naomi Osaka in the 2021 Australian Open final, Brady said she felt emotionally and physically drained.Kelly Defina/ReutersShe had already experienced some minor foot pain, but in March as she prepared for the Miami Open, she said, she woke up in the “middle of the night with a sharp, stabbing pain” in the sole of her left foot.She was diagnosed with plantar fasciitis but pressed on. By May, when she played in the Italian Open, she woke up after a match and said she “couldn’t walk.”She split with Geserer, in part because she felt they had pushed too hard.“There was no drama,” she said. “It was just a little too much; too much structure at that time period.”She went to the French Open and was in so much pain during her first-round victory over Anastasija Sevastova that she cried during the match. She managed to win her second-round match with Fiona Ferro but began experiencing back spasms in her third-round loss to Coco Gauff and stopped after losing the first set.“I was compensating for the foot,” Brady said. “So, I started having pain everywhere.”‘Like Stepping on a Porcupine’She skipped the grass-court season, received a cortisone injection and a platelet-rich plasma injection in her foot but lost in the first round at the Tokyo Olympics and returned to the U.S. to try to get ready for the 2021 U.S. Open.“Some mornings I would wake up, and I’d be like, ‘Oh my God, I’m healed, like, it’s gone!’” she said. “And then I’d go on court, and I’d be like, ‘Damn, it’s not.’ I also had a ton of nerve compression, nerve pain. It wasn’t just plantar fasciitis. So, it was like stepping on a porcupine every step, and I was so sensitive that I would have to take my shoe and sock off because my foot would be so hot. It felt like somebody was lighting a match on my skin.”She played the Western and Southern Open on painkillers and was feeling good in her second-round match against Jelena Ostapenko before experiencing new pain in her right knee. She remembers running for a short ball late in the second set and feeling “like an explosion in my left heel.”“I immediately couldn’t put weight on it,” she said.Brady training at the U.S.T.A. National Campus in Orlando, Fla.Jacob Langston for The New York TimesJacob Langston for The New York TimesShe retired from the match and soon withdrew from the U.S. Open. She had a stress fracture in her right knee and would later discover that she also had a partial tear in her left plantar fascia. She had right knee surgery in March 2022 to repair cartilage damage but still had lingering foot pain.“Anytime I would feel pain, I would freak out because I’d be like, it’s back to where it was,” she said. “And I’d lose sleep over it; so many negative thoughts start rolling in the back of my head.”There has been angst about finances. Brady’s time near the top in women’s tennis was brief and though she has earned more than $4.6 million in prize money, pro tennis has plenty of overhead. And her medical bills, even with insurance, have been stacking up during her long layoff.“I don’t want to blow through all my money,” she said.Brady added: “When can I start doing my job?”The answer, at last, is now. More

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      Sabalenka Skips French Open News Conference Citing Her Mental Health

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      The Belarusian player faced questions about the war earlier in the week from a Ukrainian reporter. On Friday, with the tournament’s blessing, she did not attend her post-match news conference.Aryna Sabalenka’s day began with a routine demolition of Kamilla Rakhimova of Russia that propelled the world’s second-ranked player, who is from Belarus, into the second week of the French Open as expected.But then Sabalenka put herself, the tournament and tennis once more at the center of the debate over sports and the war in Ukraine by refusing to attend the mandatory post-match news conference. She said she had felt unsafe during a previous news conference this week when a journalist from Ukraine asked Sabalenka about her support of President Alexandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus, which has supported Russia’s war against Ukraine.“On Wednesday I did not feel safe in press conference,” Sabalenka was quoted as saying at the beginning of a transcript of her statements following her 6-2, 6-2 win over Rakhimova. “I should be able to feel safe when I do interviews with the journalists after my matches. For my own mental health and well-being, I have decided to take myself out of this situation today, and the tournament has supported me in this decision.”Cédric Laurent, a spokesman for the French tennis federation, the F.F.T., which organizes this Grand Slam tournament, one that has been dominated by geopolitics from the start, said federation officials learned after Sabalenka’s match that she would not participate in the news conference.French Open officials approved Sabalenka’s decision for Friday’s match but said no decision had yet been made about her news conferences during the rest of the tournament.Laurent said a “pool” had been selected to interview Sabalenka, but he declined to specify who was in the pool or if they were members of the independent news media or worked for the tournament or the women’s tennis tour, the WTA.A person with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to speak on the matter said that only one person — a WTA employee — asked questions in the pool interview.A person familiar with the WTA’s actions who was also not authorized to speak on the matter said the organization supported Sabalenka’s desire not to participate in the news conference and the manner in which her statements were delivered.Sabalenka’s representatives at IMG, the sports and entertainment firm that is a unit of Endeavor, did not respond to requests for comment.The decision on Sabalenka comes two years after a confrontation with Naomi Osaka over attendance at news conferences led her to drop out of the French Open. Osaka announced on social media before the start of the tournament that she would not participate in the news conferences in order to protect her mental health and would pay whatever fines she received.After Osaka skipped the news conference following her opening-round win, she was fined $15,000 by the tournament referee, and the leaders of the four Grand Slam competitions — the Australian, French and U.S. Opens, and Wimbledon — threatened that she could be expelled from the French Open and face harsher penalties if she would not fulfill her media obligations.Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam champion and one of the world’s top-ranked players at the time, pulled out the next day, announcing for the first time that she had been battling depression and planned to take a break from tennis. She returned seven weeks later, but stepped away once more in the fall of 2021. She battled injuries for much of 2022, and is now pregnant with her first child, though she has said she intends to return after the birth.In Sabalenka’s case, the decision came following two tense exchanges with Daria Meshcheriakova, a part-time journalist from Ukraine who works for Tribuna, a sports publication based in the country.During the first exchange Meshcheriakova asked Sabalenka what her message to the world was about the war and why she had claimed that Ukrainian players “hate” her. Sabalenka denied having said that and then spoke as openly as she ever had regarding the war.“Nobody in this world, Russian athletes or Belarusian athletes, support the war. Nobody,” said Sabalenka, who lives in Miami. “How can we support the war? Nobody, normal people will never support it.”Three days later, after Sabalenka’s second-round match, Meshcheriakova challenged her about a letter she supposedly signed in 2020 in support of Lukashenko, “in times when he was torturing and beating up protesters in the street,” and about having participated in a New Year’s celebration with him.The letter that Sabalenka supposedly signed has not been made public, and her New Year’s celebration with the Belarusian president has not been independently verified, though there are many pictures of Sabalenka and Lukashenko together. In an interview Friday, Meshcheriakova, who left Kyiv for the Netherlands 10 days after the war began when missiles landed close to her apartment and whose parents still live in Russia-occupied Luhansk, said she had learned of the letter and the New Year’s celebration from prominent Belarusian journalists who had been forced to leave the country.“It’s true,” Meshcheriakova said, “and you saw how she responded.”Sabalenka said she had no comments about either question, then began to answer Meshcheriakova’s next question: “So you basically support everything because you cannot speak up? You’re not a small person, Aryna.”But Sabalenka quickly cut herself off when a moderator stated that Sabalenka had made it clear she would not comment further.“It’s all clear to us,” Meshcheriakova said to conclude the exchange.Sabalenka is scheduled to play Sloane Stephens on Sunday in the fourth round. Teresa Suarez/EPA, via ShutterstockElina Svitolina, who is a kind of unofficial leader of the Ukrainian members of the tour, said they simply wanted to hear from players representing Russia and Belarus that they believe their countries should end the war.“I think pretty much all Ukrainians would love to hear that from their side,” Svitolina said after her three-set win over Anna Blinkova of Russia.Like the other Ukrainian players, Svitolina did not shake Blinkova’s hand after the match.“Can you imagine the guy or a girl who is right now in a front line, you know, looking at me and I’m, like, acting like nothing is happening,” Svitolina said. “I’m representing my country. I have a voice.”Sabalenka is scheduled to play Sloane Stephens of the United States on Sunday in the fourth round. It’s not yet clear whether she will face reporters after the match.Meshcheriakova, who works as a political analyst in addition to covering sports, said she was returning to her day job after Saturday. She said she had been using vacation time to report on the tournament and was paying her own expenses.In Osaka’s case, tournament officials said that not requiring Osaka to attend news conferences could give her an unfair advantage over other players.Stephens, who is a member of the WTA Players’ Council, said Friday that she supported Sabalenka’s decision not to attend her news conference, and that every player had a right to feel safe performing her media obligations.“Everyone needs to feel good about themselves and what they’re doing,” Stephens said. “If she doesn’t feel safe, then she doesn’t need to be there. That’s the end of that.”Meshcheriakova said she had spoken with her parents earlier in the day. Her mother, she said, had been watching the Russian media coverage of the story, in which she was described using the Russian words for a Black cross-dresser. She implored her daughter to stop covering the tournament and to leave immediately.“Of course I told her I wouldn’t,” Meshcheriakova said. “I’m a journalist.” More

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      Naomi Osaka Announces She Is Pregnant and Won’t Play in 2023

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      The tennis star, who withdrew from the Australian Open this week, posted a photo of an ultrasound on Instagram.The tennis player Naomi Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam winner, announced on Wednesday that she is pregnant.She posted a photograph of an ultrasound on Instagram, and added, “One thing I’m looking forward to is for my kid to watch one of my matches and tell someone, ‘that’s my mom,’ haha.”She said in the post that she would be at the 2024 Australian Open.Three days ago, Osaka, 25, dropped out of this year’s Australian Open, which begins Monday. She has not played a tournament since September. Because of the missed time, she is currently ranked No. 47 in the world.Osaka won the Australian Open in 2019 and 2021. She also won the U.S. Open in 2018 and 2020. She has been involved in a relationship with the rapper Cordae since 2019.Serena Williams won the 2017 Australian Open while she was roughly two months pregnant. Osaka did not reveal how far along she was in the Instagram post.Osaka withdrew from the 2021 French Open after declining to attend news conferences, saying that she found them detrimental to her mental health, and she revealed that she had struggled with depression. She took a break from the game and also missed time with an Achilles’ tendon injury last year.Though she has lived in the United States since she was a toddler, Osaka, whose parents are Haitian American and Japanese, represents Japan and was given the honor of lighting the cauldron to begin the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.Because of numerous endorsement deals, Osaka is one of the top 20 earning athletes in the world and the highest-paid woman, Forbes has reported.Her business portfolio includes a skin care products company focused on people with darker skin tones, and she has written a children’s book. Last year, Osaka and her longtime agent, Stuart Duguid, left IMG, the sports and entertainment conglomerate, to begin Evolve, which manages Osaka’s business interests as well as other clients. More

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      Naomi Osaka Withdraws From the Australian Open

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      Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam champion, was once widely considered the world’s top hardcourt player, but she has struggled to regain her form after injuries and time away from tennis.Naomi Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam champion, has withdrawn from the Australian Open, the latest turn in an increasingly enigmatic career.The Australian Open announced Osaka’s withdrawal on Sunday in Melbourne. Dayana Yastremska will now move into the main draw of the tournament, which starts Jan. 15.Osaka, who won the Australian Open in 2019 and 2021, has not played a tournament since September, when she withdrew from a match in Japan with abdominal pain.Once seemingly destined to compete for the biggest championships in tennis for the next decade, Osaka has struggled to regain her form since she took two lengthy breaks from competition in 2021.The first break came after her withdrawal from that season’s French Open, where she went public with her longtime struggles with depression. She returned for the Olympic Games in midsummer, but after a disappointing early-round loss at the U.S. Open, she announced an indefinite break.Osaka returned to the tour compete in Australia last January, and she seemed to be well down the road back when she reached the final of the Miami Open in April. She said that she wanted to be No. 1 again. But an Achilles’ tendon injury cut short her clay-court season and also prevented her from playing in Wimbledon.Osaka then won just one match during the summer hardcourt swing in North America, a disappointing result because Osaka was once considered the world’s premier hardcourt player. The Australian Open, the year’s first Grand Slam, is played on hardcourts as well.Despite her limited play and a ranking that sunk to 85th in the world last February, Osaka remains one of the highest earning athletes in the world, with endorsement deals that have pushed her annual income to more than $50 million, according to Forbes.And she remains very busy away from the court. Osaka launched a representation agency in May to take further control of her mounting business portfolio. Osaka and her longtime agent, Stuart Duguid, left IMG, the sports and entertainment conglomerate, to begin Evolve. Nick Kyrgios, an Australian tennis star, has since joined the agency as well.At the time, Duguid said that Osaka’s main priority remained winning tennis matches and tournaments but that launching Evolve allowed her to engage her interests in culture and business.“She’s not someone who likes to play video games and binge Netflix all day,” said Duguid, who has worked closely with Osaka since she was a teenager.Duguid predicted that Osaka’s business portfolio could grow to $150 million annually in the coming years through investments and ventures such as Kinlò, a skin care products company focused on people with darker skin tones.In December, Osaka released a children’s book, “The Way Champs Play.” She wrote that she hoped the book “inspires kids to chase their dreams and encourages them to believe they can do anything they put their minds to.” More

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      Naomi Osaka, Serena Williams and One Last Shared U.S. Open

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      Osaka lost in the first round Tuesday to Danielle Collins, but would remember the final Grand Slam of the year for the front-row seat she had to her idol’s farewell party. A little more than 24 hours had passed since Serena Williams captivated Arthur Ashe Stadium with her opening-round triumph and bedazzled tennis dress, wrap and hair, and now it was Naomi Osaka’s turn.A year ago, with Williams sidelined with a hamstring injury, Osaka had brought so much heat to the U.S. Open, even before her third-round loss led her to announce that she needed to step away from tennis because it brought her so little joy and so much sadness, even if the sport had allowed her to eclipse Williams as the highest-paid female athlete.Now, for what she says is the last time, Williams is back, and once more, these two megastars that transcend their sport are connected, just as they have been since a fireworks-filled final at Ashe four years ago evolved into both a torch-passing and a moment that has linked them through their careers.Osaka, who lost to the 19th-seeded Danielle Collins, 7-6 (5), 6-3, in a match that bled into early Wednesday morning, is struggling to get out of a prolonged slump as she battles nagging injuries and could not reclaim her magic the way Williams did Monday night. “This is what makes you great, being able to win matches like this even if it’s in the first round,” Osaka said after coming up short. The loss meant a second consecutive premature exit from a tournament that once looked like it would be her grandest stage for years, and it happened despite all those connections she embraced over the past week to the role model she still reveres, who will be back in the spotlight Wednesday night.“I’m a product of what she’s done,” Osaka said Saturday in her pretournament news conference. “I wouldn’t be here without Serena, Venus, her whole family.”Like everything else at this tournament, Osaka’s match seemed peripheral to Serena Williams’s narrative, even if Osaka’s loss had its own significance. At the moment, Osaka is more famous than she is successful at the game that gave her stardom, which could become a problem if those two phenomena do not align soon, and now she will have to do it without her tennis guidepost on tour with her. Since Williams delivered her intentionally vague announcement that she would stop playing competitive tennis at some point after this U.S. Open, few players — perhaps even, few people — have taken the news as hard or tried to collect these last morsels of Williams’s professional tennis life as much as Osaka has.Sensing that end might not be far-off, Osaka cried as she watched Williams’s first match in Toronto earlier this month at the National Bank Open, and she cheered Williams on during her first-round match at the Western and Southern Open in Ohio the following week.It was similar to how she felt after she beat Williams in the semifinals of the Australian Open last year, a loss that caused Williams to break down during her news conference and end it after just a few questions. At the time, Osaka sensed that was the last time Williams was going to play in Australia.Assuming Williams keeps her word, Osaka’s intuition will have aged well once more. The morning after the first-round Toronto match, Williams’s announcement in Vogue that the end was imminent hit Osaka hard.“I’m like, ‘Oh, my God,’ this is what devastation must feel like,” Osaka said of what she felt as she read the news. “It really is an honor just to keep watching her play.”Osaka was watching once more Monday night. She donned a baseball cap and a pair of round glasses and sat roughly 20 rows up from the court, even to the baseline, in the front row of a corporate box but in the open air, with fans passing in the aisle within an arm’s length of her.Coco Gauff, another young Black player who has credited Williams’s career with providing inspiration and a road map for her own path in tennis, was in the stands as well. Gauff, who had won her first-round match Monday afternoon, had planned to watch Williams’s match on television, but changed her mind, deciding she did not want to miss the moment dedicated to the woman who had given her belief.“It made me feel that I could do it,” she said Monday of learning about how Williams and her sister Venus had grown up poor in Compton, Calif., and broken into what had been an overwhelmingly white sport. “I hope that somebody can look at me and say that I feel like I can do it because she did it.”Osaka, whose mother is Japanese and father is Haitian, is a Japanese national, but, like Williams, she grew up largely as a Black woman in America, but their links go far beyond that.Like Williams, Osaka was largely coached by her father, who has spoken of copying the playbook Richard Williams essentially wrote for creating female champions. Osaka also has an older sister who played professional tennis; Mari Osaka, 26, retired last year.For much of their childhoods, Mari was the better player, though Naomi appeared to have a higher ceiling because of her speed, just as Serena Williams did. The first mountain each had to climb was getting good enough to play with and then beat their older sisters. Like Williams, Naomi Osaka has not been shy about speaking out on social justice issues, especially in 2020, following a series of police killings and shootings of Black people. Both have been unafraid to take on the tennis establishment.They played each other five times. Osaka won three of the matches, most memorably the 2018 U.S. Open final, when an overmatched Williams was penalized for receiving coaching and ended up in an ugly dispute with the chair umpire, Carlos Ramos. Osaka ended up in tears during the trophy ceremony as the crowd howled at the outcome.That was the first of Osaka’s four Grand Slam singles titles. It was the second of the four finals Williams lost while on the precipice of tying Margaret Court’s record of 24 Grand Slam singles championships. Williams has not won any Grand Slam singles titles since then. Osaka has won three more, including the 2020 U.S. Open, and was on the cusp of taking the torch from Williams and full control of the sport until her struggles with mental health prevented her from playing all but a few matches during the last six months of 2021. This April, she made the final of the Miami Open, her best result since her comeback began in January, but battled an Achilles’ tendon injury that derailed her preparation for the French Open and forced her to pull out of Wimbledon. After a few hard-fought losses this summer, Osaka badly wanted to play into the later rounds of the U.S. Open, and she came out on fire, lacing serves and forehands and digging balls out of the corners as she sprinted to an early 3-0 lead, looking like the Osaka of two years ago. But Collins quickly matched every ounce of Osaka’s power and proved just a little bit sharper, and maybe a bit luckier in the crucial first-set tiebreaker. She floated a desperate lob that caught the back of the baseline and knuckled a mis-hit service return that Osaka could not handle to clinch the set. In the second set, Osaka took another early lead only to succumb to another rush from Collins, as her forehand grew a little too loose on a night with so little margin for error. Collins gambled with big swings that paid off more often than not, and more often than Osaka’s gambles did. With Collins serving for the match, Osaka had two shots to get back on serve but couldn’t find the winners she needed and sent a backhand long to give Collins the match. “I just have to chill a little bit,” Osaka said while the loss was still raw. “There’s a lot of random chaos in my head right now.”She paused a slow walk off the court and an early departure from the tournament to sign some courtside autographs. Then it was over, and the tournament spotlight was back on Williams once more. More