Naomi Osaka (L) and Michael Phelps communicate at a discussion board on psychological well being through the U.S. Open tennis event in New York, U.S., September 6, 2023. /CFP
Four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka plans to return to tennis in time for the 2024 Australian Open.
In an interview with ESPN on the U.S. Open on Wednesday, Osaka replied “yes” when requested if she could be in Melbourne in the beginning of subsequent 12 months.
She stated her break from the game “really fueled a fire in me” throughout a psychological well being discussion board with swimming legend Michael Phelps at Flushing Meadows in New York.
“It’s definitely way more tournaments than I used to play,” stated Osaka, who’s a 25-year-old who was born in Japan and moved to the United States together with her mother and father when she was three.Â
She has received 4 Grand Slam singles titles with triumphs within the Australian Open in 2019 and 2021 and the U.S. Open in 2018 and 2020.
She gave beginning to daughter Shai in July and hasn’t performed since September 2022, when she made her final event look on the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo.
Osaka revealed her points with despair and nervousness when she withdrew from the French Open in 2021. She later took prolonged breaks from the sport to guard her psychological well being.
Her newest time away “really raised my love for the sport and it made me realize I’m not going to play forever. I have to embrace the times. I’ve been playing tennis since I was three,” she stated. “I don’t think I can predict what I’ll do – I never am able to do that – but it definitely made me appreciate a lot of things that I took for granted.”
Phelps mentioned a “breaking point” almost 10 years in the past, “where I didn’t want to be alive.”
“I literally didn’t talk about anything I was going through with my own family for 10 years and then it just – I was a volcano that erupted,” Phelps stated. “Instead of talking about it, I just let it build.”
(With enter from businesses)
Source: CGTN