Naomi Osaka

Naomi Osaka, a Japanese who grew up in the United States, is the player currently coached by Patrick Mouratoglou. A former world No. 1 and four-time Grand Slam champion between 2018 and 2021, she is trying to return to that level after giving birth to a daughter in 2023. Blessed with a phenomenal ball-strike, she has been coached by Patrick Mouratoglou since September 2024.

The native of Osaka, Japan, has seven WTA Tour titles to her name, including four Grand Slam titles and two WTA 1000 titles (Indian Wells 2018, Beijing 2019). Naomi Osaka has beaten a member of the world’s Top 10 13 times in her career, including twice the world number one (Simona Halep at Indian Wells in 2018, Ashleigh Barty in Beijing in 2019). After taking a break in 2023 to become a mother, Osaka returned to competition in January 2024. Under the supervision of Patrick Mouratoglou, she is now hoping to return to the highest level.

“I’m very excited because I think she’s playing incredibly well,” said Patrick Mouratoglou on the sidelines of UTS Frankfurt. “Of course, she’s a champion who has won several Grand Slam titles and she was also world number 1. I sense a real motivation in her to get back to the top as much as possible. It’s my challenge to bring her back to her best level and do even better if possible. You can’t know exactly when the work will start to bear fruit. The only thing that’s certain is that it will happen at some point.
 

WTA career

By winning the 2018 US Open and beating Serena Williams in the final, Naomi Osaka became the first Japanese player in history to win a Grand Slam tournament. The following year, she also became the first Asian player to become world number one.

The Japanese player now has four Grand Slam titles in total, two at the US Open (2018, 2020) and two at the Australian Open (2019, 2021). A solid member of the Top 10 from 2018 to 2022, she then fell down the rankings due to poor results, issues linked to her mental health (a subject she helped to publicise with other athletes such as Simon Byles) and an Achilles tendon injury. Absent for the whole of the 2023 season due to her first pregnancy, she returned to competition in 2024 to try to regain her best level.

WTA honours list

Naomi Osaka has contested eleven finals on the WTA Tour and won seven of them. She was crowned champion at Indian Wells and the US Open in 2018, at the Australian Open, Osaka and Beijing in 2019, at the US Open again in 2020 and at the Australian Open a second time in 2021. She played and lost her last final in Miami in 2022, against Iga Swiatek.

Osaka didn’t wait long to make her mark on the WTA Tour. In her first match on the professional circuit at just 16, in 2014 at the Stanford tournament, Osaka eliminated Samantha Stosur, then ranked 19th in the world. Two years later, she broke into the Top 100 and then the Top 50 thanks to her good results.

Naomi Osaka was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1997 and moved to the United States with her family four years later. She has an older sister, Mari, who is also a former tennis player. The Japanese singer is in a relationship with American rapper Cordae, with whom she had a daughter, Shai, in 2023.

In 2021, she became co-owner of the North Carolina Courage women’s club, which plays in the NWSL, the American women’s football league.