Naomi—or, “Clayomi”—Osaka: The Great Reset

As triumphant returns to Paris go, Naomi Osaka’s reappearance in the French capital for Roland Garros won’t compare to Napoleon Bonaparte’s return from exile in 1840, or to President Charles De Gaulle’s march of liberation down the Champs-Elysees near the end of World War II. It may not even match the stir that resulted earlier this year, when Rihanna announced her return to Paris Fashion Week.

Still, Osaka’s resumption of her quest for a Grand Slam title on clay is not just a notable athletic event, it’s a development worth celebrating for what it represents: the rehabilitation of a player whose future in tennis, once seemingly limitless, fell into serious jeopardy when mental health concerns led her to pull out of Roland Garros, mid-tournament, three years ago.

“I'm just really excited to learn more about [the] clay-court [game] and develop and go to play in Paris,” Osaka said in the course of her recent success in Rome, where Osaka logged two Top 20 wins and reached the fourth round before losing to No. 7-ranked Zheng Qinwen.

Zina Garrison, the former Wimbledon finalist who posted a career-high ranking of No. 4, told me that Osaka’s recent progress is cause for optimism.

“Her chances may be slim, but she’s been making some very strong mental efforts to take it one day at a time. For a champ like her, that can be very difficult. But she’s one of those players who, when she gets hot, will really be hot.”

While contending in Paris so soon in her comeback is a big ask, Osaka’s attitude is a far cry from the outlook that sent her career into a tailspin. Her confusion and disaffection at the time were painful to behold. They led Osaka—then just 23, a four-time Grand Slam champion and already a former No. 1—into an extended hiatus from tennis. Osaka’s dismay with the pressure brought on by her success also triggered a national and, ultimately, global reckoning involving many other high-profile athletes.

Ironically, Osaka’s cri de coeur ended up heaping more rather than less attention on her. People wondered, would happen next?

The answer was a long rest, motherhood (she has a infant daughter, Shai), and a career reset. Garrison saw the comeback coming, because of Osaka’s references to it during the late stage of pregnancy.

“She was getting ready to have her baby and she kept talking about coming back. To me that said she really missed tennis, maybe more than she thought she would.”

The strongest proof that Osaka, now 26, has recovered her equilibrium is that while the clay season had been the flashpoint for her discontent, she’s all-in on it this time.

That’s no small thing. It was the stress Osaka experienced trying to duplicate her hard-court success on clay (all four of her major wins came at the Australian or US Opens), and the relentless focus of pundits on that challenge, that sparked her crash in 2021. Although Osaka tried to jump-start her enthusiasm after that episode, she lost the only match she played at Roland Garros in 2022. It was a prelude to her decision to play no tour tennis at all in 2023.

She was getting ready to have her baby and she kept talking about coming back. To me that said she really missed tennis, maybe more than she thought she would. Zina Garrison

So here we are. Osaka’s results during the recent early hard-court segment were encouraging, but the real litmus test for her state of mind, as well as her game, is being administered on clay. Until a week ago in Rome, Osaka had never taken down a Top 20 player, nor advanced as far as the fourth round at a clay-court tournament.

Clearly, this is not someone going through the motions to satisfy sponsors, or killing time before the back end of the season plays out on the surface she feels most comfortable. The significant difference between now and this time in 2021 is that Osaka, currently ranked No. 134, is bent on a comeback rather than struggling to live up to a constant refrain of “more!” The pressure of hopes is much easier to bear than the pressure of expectations. But it’s still a daunting mission.

“When you’re used to winning, you get seeded. You get free points because people are afraid of you,” Garrison says, “But when it switches around and people start beating you, it gets tougher. People play better against you, and you no longer get those free points because of who you were at one time.”

Osaka launched her clay season at a small tournament in Rouen, France. It ended inauspiciously, with a first-round loss to No. 78 Martina Trevisan. She moved on to Madrid, where she won her opener, and then gave No. 17 Ludmila Samsonova all she could handle in a tight three-set loss. That week, Osaka also played a practice match with Daria Kasatkina, a defensive wizard adept at dicing and slicing up aggressive players on clay.

Kasatkina, ranked No. 10, schooled Osaka, allowing her a single game in two sets. Point taken. Osaka took mental notes and resolved to figure out how to breathe more life into her clay-court game. She booked herself a quick, one-week training block on clay courts in Mallorca, Spain as a prelude to the Rome Masters.

“I watched some videos,” Osaka told reporters in Rome. “I watched Rafa. I watched Alcaraz. I watched Rublev, which was very inspiring because he's smacking the ball. I kind of thought to myself, like, ‘I don't want to have regrets when I leave the court.’ In Madrid I did kind of have regrets of not swinging fully. I focused on that—a lot.”

In Rome, Osaka also mentioned that when passing through the hallway leading to the gym area, she could not help but see the posters of former champions, including Mary Pierce, Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova. Osaka said she found it uplifting to look at them.

“It makes me very inspired, knowing that hard-hitters can play well on clay.”

As observations go, that may not sound very deep. But it was an invaluable realization. Hitting a big ball has always been the wellspring of her success, and there was no reason why that shouldn’t be true on all surfaces. The power players didn’t alter their games for clay, they adapted to it. Osaka made significant progress in that direction during Rome, as evidenced by her 6-3, 6-3 win over...Kasatkina.

It would be silly to read too much into one result, but Osaka played a well-modulated game. She traipsed along that razor-sharp line between needless risk and self-defeating restraint. But the heartening long-term news was that she appeared to enjoy the process. By the end of her week, the social media Twitterati had dubbed her, “Claynomi.”

“Honestly, I just wanted to play smart tennis,” Osaka said. “I wanted to play the higher-percentage ball no matter what. I think in that match, when it got tight, I did overhit maybe one or two shots. I kind of realized that and I tried to get back in the groove of things. . . Just being smarter with the hard shots that I do hit.”

“I’ve been been impressed by her patience,” Garrison said of Osaka, “because I wondered if she could control that patience. She seems to be doing it.”

That was a great step forward for a pro who had previously addressed the challenge of clay with an ever-fluctuating mixture of indecision, avoidance and impatience—with a measure of rationalization thrown in. Osaka’s reaction to the last clay-court match she played before Roland Garros in 2021 is still telling. After taking a first-round, straight-sets loss in Rome to a then-31st-ranked Jessica Pegula, she said: “In a weird way, I'm kind of glad I'm not winning. I know that sounds a bit off, but I feel like I'm learning a lot. It kind of gives me a lot of drive to practice harder and to learn from all my practices.”

Yet even then, Osaka knew that you couldn’t learn or practice your way to success on clay. She knew exactly what her game was founded on, putting it this way: “I'm not magically going to start hitting my balls like three feet above the net. I'm an aggressive player, that's what I do. That's what helps me win.”

Osaka may be developing the requisite combination of patience and aggression called for on dirt. It’s likely that, like many other pros who did not develop their games on clay, she was bamboozled by the mystique of the natural surface. If her frustrations clouded her vision, the extended hiatus she took, and the changes wrought by motherhood seem to have helped restore her clarity. Instead of focusing on “learning” and “practice,” she is embracing her nature as a “see-ball, hit-ball” type of player—with caveats.

Maybe it wasn’t all that complicated after all. There is aggressive tennis, there is defensive tennis, there is creative tennis, there is by-rote tennis. But the best tennis is still smart tennis, which manages to be not that complicated—yet it remains easier-said-than-done.

That’s a useful piece of knowledge for “Claynomi” to take along to Paris, seeking a triumphant return.