"I don't know what you expect me to do" - Naomi Osaka hits out at UCLA as parking woes persist despite repeated alerts during preseason
Naomi Osaka’s struggles at UCLA have continued despite the player repeatedly alerting the authorities about her parking woes. She was recently handed two parking tickets, which aggravated her frustrations.
After an extended trip to her home country, Japan, and a Cayman Islands getaway, Osaka has commenced her preseason preparations with new coach Patrick Mouratoglou. The Japanese tennis player has chosen the UCLA campus (University of California, Los Angeles) as her base, but her training block hasn’t been as plain sailing as she would have hoped.
Naomi Osaka was recently slapped with two parking tickets after seemingly failing to pay for her spot. She, however, argued that the university’s faulty parking machines are to blame for the debacle. Interestingly, the four-time Grand Slam champion also attached a handwritten note on her windshield in hopes of being excused by the authorities.
"Park Mobile doesn’t work neither does your pay station. I tried like four times," the note read.
Osaka’s efforts were in vain as the authorities disregarded her note. She, however, did not hold back in voicing her frustrations.
"@ucla heyyy so your parking machines don’t work and neither does Park Mobile. I don’t know what you expect me to do but I think giving someone two tickets cause your machines don’t work is a little wrong," she wrote on Instagram.
"And the thing that kills me is that whoever wrote the ticket saw my note, pushed it to the side and wrote back-to-back tickets anyway. I’m so upset," she added.
Naomi Osaka hilariously revealed that she found solace in Lady Gaga’s 2008 hit “Poker Face” after her emotional breakdown.
"Literally needed to listen to childhood songs to calm down on the drive back," she wrote.
"They don't even let you pay for parking" – What Naomi Osaka said about UCLA's parking system
This was the third time in the past few days that Naomi Osaka got into a dispute with the UCLA authorities. The player previously opined that the university makes it “impossible” to pay for parking.
"Why does UCLA make it impossible to pay for parking on their parking lots??? It’s almost like you want to give me a ticket even though I’m trying to pay," she wrote a few days ago.
A day later, Naomi Osaka warned the campus authorities of “real beef” if she receives another ticket.
"Practice is over. I’m hoping I don’t get a ticket. In all honesty, I’m walking to the parking lot and if I have the ticket, there’s gonna be some real beef because I even put a note. They don’t even let you pay for parking. I tried online parking and I tried the physical ticket machine," she said in an Instagram video.
Barring the parking woes, Naomi Osaka seems to be making on-court progress with her new coach, Mouratoglou, by her side. She has been sharing frequent updates of her training sessions ahead of her competitive return at the 2025 ASB Classic in Auckland.
It is worth mentioning that the player started her 2024 campaign unranked, having returned to the tour after maternity leave. She registered a 22-18 win-loss record during her run, with her best results being quarterfinal appearances at the WTA 250 in 'S-Hertogenbosch and the WTA 1000 in Doha.
At Grand Slams, the 27-year-old’s best results were third-round appearances in Paris, London, and New York. She is presently ranked No. 60 in the world.