"Although I won the tournament, it was the message that made me feel proud" - Naomi Osaka on bringing the Black Lives Matter protest to the US Open
Japanese tennis sensation Naomi Osaka recently reflected on the time she stood up for the Black Lives Matter movement during the 2020 US Open.
Osaka used seven different face masks during the 2020 US Open, one for each round of the competition. Each mask, which she began wearing when the tournament began on August 31, bore the name of a black individual whose death had been widely cited in countrywide Black Lives Matter protests.
After eventually winning the title, Naomi Osaka revealed that the masks were her way of leveraging her position to protest the injustices and advocate for the cause.
The four-time Grand Slam champion reflected on the topic in an essay she wrote for Net-A-Porter, stating that she believed it was "important" for her to speak up and that it made her realize that her success was not only about winning matches but also about her ability to use her "voice and platform."
"It was a very challenging time, and although I won the tournament, it was the message that I was able to convey during it that made me feel proud. It was shortly after the killing of George Floyd and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, and I wanted to highlight the lives that had been lost. I decided to wear seven different face masks – one for each round of the tournament – bearing the names of Black people whose deaths had been cited in nationwide protests about racial injustice," Osaka wrote.
"I felt that it was really important to speak out and do something that was bigger than me, bigger than the match or the tournament. That moment led me to begin to view my success not just in terms of a win but on my actions and ability to use my voice and platform. It shifted my point of view in a better direction," she added.
"I had to learn to change my own definitions of success" - Naomi Osaka
Naomi Osaka also wrote in the personal essay that in the early stages of her career, she was happy with her success being assessed on a win-loss basis.
However, as her career evolved, she realized she needed to learn to redefine her own idea of success.
"When I began, success was solely measured in wins and losses. That has always been the easiest and most tangible way to measure achievement in sports. For me, that was fine for a while, but as my career progressed and the stages I played on became larger, my wins and losses were amplified on a scale I could never have imagined. These weren’t local matches where, once the crowd left the court, they forgot about the outcome – these were major events [that were] talked about and critiqued for days, weeks and months afterwards," Osaka said.
"I knew that if I kept up that self-deflating dialogue, nothing I did in life – no win, no loss, none of it – would really matter. I had to learn to change my own definitions of success," she added.
Naomi Osaka's 2022 season has been underwhelming by her lofty standards. Her streak of winning at least one Grand Slam every year came to an end, and she didn't win any titles this year. As a result, her ranking has fallen significantly as well.
The former World No. 1's most recent performance came at the Pan Pacific Open, where she withdrew from her second-round match against Beatriz Haddad Maia due to abdominal pain.