Naomi Osaka Emotionally Reacts to Winning 1st Round at U.S. Open

Naomi Osaka was overcome with emotion after she won her first match at the U.S. Open.

Osaka, 26, defeated Jelena Ostapenko in a 6-3, 6-2 victory on Tuesday, August 27, advancing herself to the second round. After her win, Osaka wiped the sweat and tears off her face with a towel. As she continued to soak in her victory, the tennis player got more visibly emotional.

“I was trying not to cry when I was walking out,” Osaka said to reporters in her post-game interview. “Last year I was watching Coco [Gauff] play and I so badly wanted to step on these courts again. I didn’t know if I could … just to play this match and just to be in this atmosphere means so much to me.”

Osaka, who has won four Grand Slam championships, shared that returning to the U.S. Open this year has been an emotional journey. She confessed that seeing all the faces in the stadium rooting her on made the moment even sweeter. (Osaka did not participate in last year’s tournament since she was on maternity leave after welcoming daughter Shai, 13 months, with boyfriend Cordae in July 2023.)

“I grew up here, so just seeing kids, and then remembering my daughter, but seeing kids coming and watching me play and just remembering that I was a kid … [it] made me very emotional,” she said. “Just seeing the stadium really full, it meant a lot, because I was, like, ‘Oh, I hope people come watch me play.’”

Two months after welcoming her daughter, Osaka announced her intention to return to tennis for the following year.

“I definitely only know this world, the tennis world, and just being away from that for a long time, it was new for me,” she told ESPN in September 2023. “I think it was just the whole new situation and not being able to train like I wanted to things like that, it kind of made me feel like I just had to stay at home, and you know how doctors tell you not to travel after a certain amount of weeks, it just felt like a lot of restrictions. I think that was what it was.”

A few months later, Osaka got candid about the difficulties she faced during her first pregnancy. The athlete revealed that she tested positive for Group B streptococcus — a bacterial infection that can give newborns meningitis or sepsis — and was in labor for over 12 hours.

“I don’t think people know how hard pregnancy is. No one really talks about it as much,” she told InStyle in December 2023. “Going into it, you kind of think, ‘Oh, it’s this beautiful journey.’ But it’s kind of rough.”