The former Australian Open champion is not competing in Melbourne this year, having rejected the grind of the tourA long time ago, I took a part-time job in a high-street clothing store. It was late November, and amid the chaos of the Christmas rush I quickly discovered that nobody had the faintest idea what I was meant to be doing or whether I was actually doing it. One morning I overslept and queasily awaited the shrill phone call from a supervisor. It never came. The day passed.More days passed. Days turned into weeks. The payslips continued to hit the doormat. If there was any faint paroxysm of guilt or shame at taking this multinational giant for £5.15 an hour while...
The building blocks of our culture stop us seeing the famous as people. That is not the function we have assigned themNaomi Osaka gave a press conference on Friday night. She’s started doing them again, by the way; I mention this only because after opting out of media duties during the French Open this year, lots of people immediately decided that she was weaponising her own mental health as a sly ruse to evade media scrutiny. Still, a lot of red-faced talk-show hosts and newspaper columnists got to lecture a 23-year-old woman on her personal choices, so maybe that was the most important thing.It was a tough watch. Osaka had just lost in tempestuous circumstances against Leylah Fernandez at the...
The world No 2 has been treated as a threat, a familiar reception that black athletes receive when they step outside the boxOn Monday evening the four-time grand slam champion Naomi Osaka, the brightest young star across the world of tennis, withdrew from Roland Garros because she felt that her attempts to preserve her mental wellbeing were a distraction to her peers. In other words, it marks a shameful moment for tennis.Osaka had announced in a statement last week that she would not conduct her press obligations during the tournament, a decision that led to six days of attention and widespread discussion across the internet. While Osaka’s initial announcement and communication was far from perfect, it was bold of her...
Young athletes are expected to answer the most intimate questions in a cynical and often predatory environmentRegular attendees of Arsenal press conferences at the Emirates Stadium – in the before-times, when these things still happened – will tell of a mysterious character by the name of First Question Man. Nobody ever discovered who FQM worked for, or if he was even a journalist at all. His only real talent, if you can call it that, was to sit in the front row and make sure he asked the first question, usually by barking it while everyone was still taking their seats.Why FQM did this was never clear. It can’t have been ego: I never met anybody who knew his real...
Her second Australian Open – and fourth major – will not be the last shiny trophy engraved with Naomi Osaka’s nameAs a coral sun set behind the Melbourne skyline, Naomi Osaka walked to her mark, danced lightly on the balls of her feet, rapped her left thigh with her left fist two times, and crouched, ready to receive Jennifer Brady’s serve. She did this over and over: jig, tap, dip; jig, tap, dip. It was a meditation that secured a second Australian Open title and a fourth grand slam for the dominant force in women’s tennis.Both finalists powered through the draw behind dominant first serves, but an unexpectedly cool and blustery evening proved disruptive. The wind was not strong, but...