{"id":780432,"date":"2026-07-05T11:00:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T11:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/780432\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T11:00:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T11:00:11","slug":"naomi-osakas-grand-slam-outfits-are-self-expression-her-tennis-is-getting-loud-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/780432\/","title":{"rendered":"Naomi Osaka\u2019s Grand Slam outfits are self-expression. Her tennis is getting loud too"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE ALL ENGLAND CLUB, London \u2014 On Naomi Osaka\u2019s way to turning the tennis court into a high-fashion runway<\/a> as no one ever has before, she has once again become a truly excellent player \u2014 especially in places where she never thought that would happen.<\/p>\n

Osaka, the trailblazing, 28-year-old, four-time Grand Slam champion will play in the second week of Wimbledon<\/a> for the first time Sunday. She has blitzed through her first three matches without losing a set, losing more than three games in a set just once and looking far from the player she was,\u00a0who seemed almost allergic to the grass swing and and had seemingly given up hope of having any success on it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of a hard thing to fathom given the way she played,\u201d said Australia\u2019s Daria Kasatkina in a news conference, after Osaka won their third-round match 6-1, 6-3 in 65 minutes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was maybe not expecting what she produced today. But I was expecting it to be a tough, tough match for me, because with her way of playing, honestly, grass must suit her well.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think she\u2019s starting to find her way on grass and you can see this with the results as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why is Wimbledon still played on grass?<\/p>\n

Tifo Sports<\/p>\n

Those results have come alongside a series of Grand Slam fashion statements from Osaka, who has used the walk-on at this year\u2019s three majors to showcase the form of self-expression that she treasures most alongside her tennis. At Wimbledon, she has worn a white ensemble inspired by Japanese ceremonial dress<\/a>, including a kimono-style dress embroidered with cherry blossoms and cranes, produced in concert with designer Hana Yagi.<\/p>\n

At the Australian Open, she opted for a floaty, flowy jellyfish-inspired ensemble<\/a> designed by couturier Robert Wun; at the French Open, her array of cascading skirts and golden sparkling dress<\/a> were inspired by the silhouette of the Eiffel Tower. Osaka has a creative team and works with the designers herself; Nike produces the on-court dresses. They have become the topic of conversation around the sport and in Osaka\u2019s news conferences.<\/p>\n

This is the sort of stuff that would drive a lot of athletes and tennis players mad. They come to the arena to practice a craft they have been training at for almost all of their lives. They\u2019re athletes. They want to talk about their sport.<\/p>\n

Not Osaka, at least not entirely. A decade into a big career that has rollicked up, down and sideways, one of the world\u2019s most famous and exposed introverts may have finally found a comfort zone in tennis through what might be her greatest passion.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would actually prefer to talk about my clothes,\u201d Osaka said in a news conference Friday after the win over Kasatkina. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of weird. In some ways I feel like I\u2019m a lot more equipped to talk about my clothes than to talk about my tennis. It\u2019s strange, because I\u2019ve been playing tennis for 20-something years. Some days I don\u2019t feel like an expert on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In some ways, Osaka said, tennis has become a vehicle for the self-expression she finds far easier with her clothes than her racket. The longer she is in the tournament, the more matches she gets to play. The more matches she gets to play, the more outfits she gets to wear, and the more stories she gets to tell.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s loving the way she\u2019s hitting the ball. Winning, playing with some much confidence, that\u2019s all great. But there\u2019s only so much she feels she can say about tennis. And it\u2019s never been easy for her to talk about.<\/p>\n

Into her teens, Osaka struggled to make eye contact with her coaches. As recently as last year, she said she sometimes feared telling her former coach Patrick Mouratoglou about the stress and discomfort she experienced during matches.<\/p>\n

The outfits she said, have helped her feel more like her authentic self when she steps onto the court.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust being able to communicate my style, being able to communicate my brand of tennis as well, because I feel like for me, my tennis is a little bit louder than I am also.\u201d<\/p>\n

On grass, that may not be the case for long.<\/p>\n

\"Naomi<\/p>\n

\n Naomi Osaka has adapted her movement to thrive in a new era of women\u2019s tennis excellence. (Adrian Dennis \/ AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Somewhere along the way in the first part of her career, Osaka convinced herself that grass wasn\u2019t for her. She\u2019d barely played on it growing up. She didn\u2019t play the Wimbledon junior events.<\/p>\n

She was at her best when she could stabilize her feet around the baseline and swing hard, the way she did on hard courts back home in Florida. Grass doesn\u2019t allow for much of that. Neither does Europe\u2019s red clay. Osaka didn\u2019t like playing on that very much either.<\/p>\n

Her seasons seemed to hit a wall in early April, when tennis moved to Europe for three months. For a multitude of reasons, post-Covid, she struggled to restart them.<\/p>\n

The struggles on clay made some sense. Big, flat hitters like her often struggle to get the ball through the court on clay. Grass made less sense. Osaka possessed a big serve, and hit a ball that stayed low and skidded through the court. That ought to work, if she could just get the hang of the footwork.<\/p>\n

In the fall of 2022, Osaka went on hiatus to have her first child, a daughter she would name Shai. By the time she returned in January of 2024, the sport had changed. The best players in the world were hitting even harder than Osaka, and doing it with more shape and curve. More importantly, they were doing it in and out of the corners of the court, turning defense into offense and opening up angles and geometries that aren\u2019t accessible if players stay in the middle.<\/p>\n

Osaka and her coaches knew this. By December of 2023 there was a former ballerina named Simone Elliott attending her practices. As her dance career wound down, Elliott developed a specialty in teaching athletes how to maintain balance as they move at high speed into extreme positions. At the time, Osaka could barely hit an open-stance backhand, an essential shot for top players these days in which the body faces the net, rather than turning perpendicular to it.<\/p>\n

So began the reincarnation of Osaka, but it took some time. She said\u00a0Friday that she didn\u2019t feel back to her old self until last summer, a full two years after giving birth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe exact moment was when I lost in D.C. last year,\u201d she said, referring to Washington D.C.\u2019s D.C. Open, where she lost handily to Britain\u2019s Emma Raducanu and subsequently split with Mouratoglou.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember thinking, \u2018I lost this match, but I feel like I could move.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt, like, a significant click. It took way longer than I thought it was going to take. Ever since then, I\u2019ve felt like I\u2019ve been moving OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

From there, Osaka has been on a mostly steady rise back near the top of the sport. After that loss to Raducanu, she made the Canadian Open final, and then the semifinals of the U.S. Open, dispatching Coco Gauff, one of the best hard-court athletes out there, on the way.<\/p>\n

This season, she keeps running into the best players of the last three years, the ones who changed the sport, seemingly whenever she gets on a roll in a tournament. At the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, the Madrid Open and the French Open, world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka outhit Osaka from the places on the court she is still finding her feet. At the Italian Open, Iga \u015awi\u0105tek dispatched her with a clay-court masterclass.<\/p>\n

Osaka faces Sabalenka again in her first Wimbledon fourth round. Perhaps this time will be different.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the grass season, her coach, Tomasz Wiktorowski, who worked with \u015awi\u0105tek, encouraged her to shift her thinking about grass. She began to focus more closely on where the ball was bouncing and how she could find ways to come forward.<\/p>\n

She said she remembers being young and stubborn about how she wanted to play on grass courts. She basically tried to pretend it was a hard court. Now, she said, she\u2019s beginning to understand grass court tennis.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s more free-flowing,\u201d Osaka said.<\/p>\n

So is she.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"THE ALL ENGLAND CLUB, London \u2014 On Naomi Osaka\u2019s way to turning the tennis court into a high-fashion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":780433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,2331,85,3276,747,19693],"class_list":["post-780432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-culture","tag-sports","tag-sports-business","tag-tennis","tag-top-sports-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}