{"id":17571,"date":"2023-09-07T06:04:32","date_gmt":"2023-09-07T11:04:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=17571"},"modified":"2023-09-07T06:04:36","modified_gmt":"2023-09-07T11:04:36","slug":"naomi-osaka-announces-return-to-professional-tennis-in-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=17571","title":{"rendered":"Naomi Osaka announces return to professional tennis in 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Former world No. 1\u00a0Naomi Osaka\u00a0intends to return to professional tennis in 2024, the 25-year-old said in an interview with ESPN on Wednesday.
The four-time major champion \u2013 who\u00a0welcomed a baby girl\u00a0in July with her boyfriend, rapper Cordae \u2013 said she plans to play a busy schedule next year.
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely way more tournaments than I used to play,\u201d Osaka\u00a0told ESPN. \u201cSo, I think some people will be happy with that.\u201d
\u201cI think it\u2019s because I realized that I don\u2019t know how the beginning of the year is going to go for me. I don\u2019t know the level of play and I think I have to ease into it. So at the very least, I\u2019m going to set myself up for a very good end of the year,\u201d Osaka said.
Osaka, who has not played since the Toray Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo in September 2022, has\u00a0previously said\u00a0she planned to return to tennis in 2024 for the Australian Open, a tournament she has won on two previous occasions.
Osaka was asked if her break from tennis made her miss it, to which she responded \u201cdefinitely.\u201d
\u201cI\u2019ve been watching matches and I\u2019m like, \u2018I wish I was playing too,\u2019\u201d Osaka said. \u201cBut I\u2019m in this position now and I\u2019m very grateful. I really love my daughter a lot, but I think it really fueled a fire in me.\u201d
Osaka took some time away from competitive tennis and made several highly publicized disclosures about her\u00a0struggles with mental health\u00a0following an incident in 2021, where she was visibly stressed and emotional while addressing the media during a mandatory news conference at Roland Garros.
She subsequently pulled out of the French Open that year and revealed she had \u201csuffered long bouts of depression\u201d since winning her first major championship in 2018.
Osaka was in attendance at the US Open in New York on Wednesday. She also participated the same day in a forum on mental health at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, joined by USA Olympic swimming legend Michael Phelps, US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, and Dr. Brian Hainline, chairman of the US Tennis Association\u2019s board and NCAA chief medical officer.
Osaka said she learned a lot from talking about her experiences with mental health and becoming an advocate for mental health awareness.
\u201cI feel like I am someone that\u2019s learning all the time. Obviously, I learned a lot from the talk as I was talking,\u201d Osaka said. \u201cI would say my role is just raising awareness and letting people know that they\u2019re not alone.
\u201cPhysical pain and mental pain are sort of the same to me. We have doctors for physical health but when we talk about mental health it\u2019s not as well received, so just raising awareness on that.\u201d
She was also asked about her comments previously that she felt \u201clonely\u201d while she was pregnant.
\u201cI definitely only know this world, the tennis world,\u201d Osaka said. \u201cJust being away from that for a long time, it was new for me. I think it was just the new situation and not being able to train like I wanted to, it made me feel like I would just stay at home. \u2026 It felt like a lot of restrictions.\u201d
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Former world No. 1\u00a0Naomi Osaka\u00a0intends to return to professional tennis in 2024, the 25-year-old said in an interview with ESPN on Wednesday.The four-time major champion \u2013 who\u00a0welcomed a baby girl\u00a0in July with her boyfriend, rapper Cordae \u2013 said she plans to play a busy schedule next year.\u201cIt\u2019s definitely way more tournaments than I used to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":17572,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[2801,22229,22228,1646],"class_list":["post-17571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-2801","tag-naomi-osaka","tag-professional-tennis","tag-return"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17571"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17573,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17571\/revisions\/17573"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}