the coronation of Naomi Osaka, new headliner in women’s tennis

Is women’s tennis finally getting its new star? Naomi Osaka has just brought a new answer to this question, winning the Australian Open on Saturday against the American Jennifer Brady (6-4, 6-3). Favorite before the meeting, the 23-year-old Japanese held her place in Melbourne to lift the seventh title of her young career, but her fourth Grand Slam in as many finals. The current world third, who will rise to second place in the next WTA ranking published on Monday, has made his power speak. Aggressive from the baseline as usual, the Japanese relied on her first service ball against Brady, a novice at this stage of the competition in a Grand Slam tournament.

“You are a great source of inspiration for all of us”, congratulated her opponent at the end of the meeting. The American had already lost five months ago in the semi-finals of the last US Open against Osaka. In Melbourne, the real final of the Japanese was played in the previous round, after she had dismissed Serena Williams (6-3, 6-4), yet returned to the best of her physical form. As a passing of the baton between the ex-world number one of 39 years – still one length of the record of 24 Grand Slam titles set by Margaret Court -, in tears after her press conference, and her 23-year-old heiress.

She is the new patron of women’s tennis ”, Said this week Justine Henin, herself former world number one of the 2000s and consultant for Eurosport during the Australian fortnight, impressed by “His charisma and his absence of weaknesses”.

Quiet strength

Naomi Osaka also seems to have drawn her serenity elsewhere than on the courts, she who likes to remember that tennis remains a game. It places as much commitment in its long backhands as in its positions, and clashes in a relatively sanitized sport. A moult initiated last spring for the highest paid athlete in the world – $ 37.4 million (nearly 31 million euros) from May 2019 to June 2020, according to the review Forbes, also succeeding the younger of the Williams sisters.

Touched by the wave of emotion following the death of African-American George Floyd during a police arrest, Naomi Osaka forced her nature reserve to speak out against any form of ostracism. “I stopped being shy. It’s a waste of time “, will she write on Twitter. In the United States, where she has lived since the age of 3, the sportswoman joined Minneapolis to take part in demonstrations against police violence and to support the American anti-racist movement.

One case too many, that of Jacob Blake – another face of racial violence raging in the United States -, and the young woman frees herself from practices towards her sponsors to boycott the semifinals of the Masters 1000 in Cincinatti, forcing the organizers to postpone his match for a day. “Before being an athlete, I was a black woman. As a black woman, I consider that there are much more important things than playing tennis ”, she said in a message posted in English and Japanese on social networks, where the champion is very followed.

As in each of her matches of the New York fortnight, Naomi Osaka wore a mask in tribute to the American victims of police violence before her final at the US Open 2020, embroidered here with the name of Tamir Rice, a young African-American killed in 2014 in Cleveland by a white policeman.

From her entry into the running until the final of the last US Open in New York, the Japanese decided to wear seven masks embroidered with the names of seven victims of racism. “She understood the influence and social responsibility of athletes”, noted in September 2020 Hidenori Tomozoe, professor of sports ethics at Waseda University, in the Japanese daily Mainichi Shimbun.

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Since then, Osaka has also taken advantage of its flourishing notoriety to take action against discrimination in Japanese society – she was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and a Haitian father, but has only sportingly represented the country since the end of 2019. Recently, the tenniswoman did not hesitate to react to the affirmations of the boss of the Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games of Tokyo, Yoshiro Mori, according to which “the women speak too much during the meetings [des conseils d’administration] ” : the “Words of an ignorant”, had castigated Osaka. Before welcoming, Thursday, the appointment of Seiko Hashimoto to replace Mori, pushed to resign.

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The athlete ignores racial prejudice in the archipelago, and prompts Japanese people to question the treatment of the community hafu, composed of children born, like her, of mixed marriages.

Possible prelude to awareness, Naomi Osaka has become a manga character in Japan and has just been appointed ambassador for the Louis Vuitton brand. The person, who also made talk about her by becoming the owner of North Carolina Courage, a women’s football club, assures, she does not “Not to feel famous” in the last magazine GQ which she makes the “one” alongside her companion, the American rapper Cordae. And to confirm that she does not intend, decidedly, to settle for tennis.

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