NEW YORK — Naomi Osaka looked over at her agent and said she wanted to tell the world what the two of them had discussed privately in an Arthur Ashe Stadium hallway after her U.S. Open title defense ended with a racket-tossing, composure-missing, lead-evaporating defeat in the third round.
His reply: “Sure.”
And then Osaka, pausing every so often as her voice got caught on her words and her eyes filled with tears, said Friday night she is thinking about taking another break from tennis “for a while."
“I feel like for me, recently, when I win, I don’t feel happy, I feel more like a relief. And then when I lose, I feel very sad," Osaka said at her news conference following a 5-7, 7-6 (2), 6-4 loss at Flushing Meadows to Leylah Fernandez, an 18-year-old from Canada who is ranked 73rd and never had been this far in Grand Slam competition. “I don’t think that's normal.”
The moderator in charge of the session with reporters attempted to cut things off, but Osaka said she wanted to continue.
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“This is very hard to articulate,” she said, resting her left cheek in her hand. “Basically, I feel like I’m kind of at this point where I’m trying to figure out what I want to do, and I honestly don’t know when I’m going to play my next tennis match.”
Crying, she lowered her black visor over her eyes and offered an apology, then patted her palms on both cheeks.
“Yeah," Osaka added as she rose to leave, “I think I’m going to take a break from playing for a while.”
This was the first Slam tournament for the 23-year-old Osaka since she pulled out of the French Open before the second round to take a mental health break after having announced she would not participate in news conferences in Paris.
She also sat out Wimbledon, before participating in the Tokyo Olympics, where she lit the cauldron as one of Japan's most famous athletes.
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Osaka owns four Grand Slam titles, including at the U.S. Open in 2018 — beating Serena Williams in a chaotic final — and a year ago, plus two more on the hard courts of the Australian Open. When she took a hiatus after Roland Garros, she revealed that she endures waves of anxiety before meeting with the media and has dealt with depression for three years.
Over the last week, Osaka has written on social media and spoken about her thoughts on the importance of self-belief and how she wants to ignore others' expectations.
The first sign Friday that things were not entirely OK with Osaka came when she smacked her racket against the court after dropping one point. Moments later, Osaka chucked her equipment, sending it bouncing and skidding halfway to the net. Then came a full-on spike near the baseline.
Afterward, she compared that behavior to acting “kind of like a little kid.”
Soon enough, the No. 3-seeded Osaka was out of the bracket.
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