MELBOURNE SUMMER SET

January 4, 2022

Naomi Osaka

Press Conference

N. OSAKA/A. Cornet

6-4, 3-6, 6-3

THE MODERATOR: What was it like being on Rod Laver Arena, back again in front of fans?

NAOMI OSAKA: Yeah, it was really nice. I have a lot of really fond memories here, so it's just nice to play, I would say, what people consider the warm-up event on Rod Laver and just be able to feel what it feels like to play a match there.

Q. I just wondered, do you feel really sort of comfortable in Melbourne, that this could be a place where you can really kick-start your career off after a bit of a rocky 2021?

NAOMI OSAKA: Honestly, I still won a Slam last year, so I don't consider it that bad. But yeah, I feel like whenever I come here, or come back here at the start of the year, it's like a breath of fresh air. Everyone is super, super nice. The vibes here are really good.

And I think that no one wants to start the year off bad, so of course my intention is to do well here. But you're playing the best players in the world, and for me I also feel like I need to play matches right now. I haven't played that many matches.

Hopefully I get more into the groove of things.

Q. On today's match, how did you feel out there, and how much were the nerves stepping back on to a competitive court, and how do you feel like you managed it?

NAOMI OSAKA: Yeah. Was that ukulele guitar always back there?

Q. Possibly, probably. It wasn't the pandemic thing, I promise.

NAOMI OSAKA: Yeah, I would say the nerves, they were a lot. But I feel like I managed it pretty well. I felt like of course playing the first match of the year is always really tough on everyone. I was expecting to play a tough match today because we've played once before, ironically probably the first round last year, as well. I knew that we both kind of knew each other's games a little bit more this time around.

But yeah, I was really happy with how it went. I thought that I stayed pretty calm throughout. But hopefully in my next rounds I can be a little bit more energetic.

Q. You were mentioning sort of the vibes and it seemed like you seemed pretty chill out there for a lot of it, at least in your face, and you said at one point after a couple calls you were shook on court. You seemed loose in a way I thought was good. How happy were you with that side of things today?

NAOMI OSAKA: Yeah, I feel like for me, I only really have one major goal this year, and it's completely unrelated to results and stuff like that. For me, I just want to feel like every time I step on the court I'm either -- not that I'm either, but I'm having fun. I can walk off the court knowing that even if I lost, I tried as hard as I could.

Also I have a goal in the pressroom, that I'm never going to cry again, so hopefully that works out in my favor.

I just feel like for me, I'm the type of person that cared a little bit too much about the results and the ranking and stuff like that. And I just need to find a way to enjoy the game again because that's the reason why I was playing in the first place.

Q. I was just wondering if I could get you to expand a little bit on what you said on court around going back and playing tennis again. You said you'd been sitting around the house, you got bored and were ready to get back out there. Can you talk us through what got you back to that point, where you felt mentally ready to resume playing sport after taking an indefinite break?

NAOMI OSAKA: Yeah, I would say what probably got me ready again was just, I guess, talking to people. For me, I tend to internalize everything, and I think that might be just based on how I grew up. I didn't really have that many friends, so I didn't really talk to anyone in the first place.

Then during the off-season I just hung out with my friends and talked to my family a lot. I felt like that was a way of decompressing the pressure I had on myself. Then I just slowly started to regain the feeling of love that I had towards the game.

It's not like it ever completely went away, but I felt like it got overshadowed by a lot of emotions that I was feeling just by constantly playing year after year since I was like -- I started tennis when I was three years old, and I never really took a break.

Yeah, sometimes it's just good to remember why you're playing and stuff.

Q. Did you deliberately want to speak to the people around you or was that something that came naturally over the course of the last year?

NAOMI OSAKA: I would say it came kind of naturally. I had no plan after the US Open. Honestly, I didn't really know what I was going to do. I kind of expected myself to travel, I would say, but I didn't really feel like that was safe because of COVID. I kind of stayed at home. My friends live near San Francisco, so I was driving to go see them and stay over at their house and bother them quite a few times.

I feel like that's also an experience that I haven't been able to have in my life, just based on the fact that I play tennis and I travel a lot and I haven't been able to have sleepovers and stuff like that.

It was cool to be able to do that.

Q. Are the emotions of last year still around? Are you still experiencing some of the, for want of another word, anxiety that you experienced? What are your plans as far as the number of tournaments you're looking to play this year?

NAOMI OSAKA: Yeah, honestly, on the number of tournaments, I'm not really sure. I tell myself that I want to play more of a full schedule, but then sometimes I find myself thinking that I don't really want to play certain tournaments because I want to go home.

It's very, very hard for me to say. I think I'll know more as the year progresses. But as of right now, I'm just focused on being in Australia.

As for the feelings and the emotions that I had the last year, I think there's a complex answer that I can give you, but I can't give that to you just yet. And then there's also a simple answer that I can give you.

I feel like for me, it was just like an extreme buildup, and you just happened to see it all release last year. I don't really feel the same way. I feel like everyone has their moments, of course, and that's what makes you human.

But I'm going into this year a bit more optimistic.

Q. I was interested to know, do you think you'll change the way that you sort of look at and approach media conferences given obviously they were uncomfortable for you at times over the past few years?

NAOMI OSAKA: Hmm. Honestly that's not the type of person I am. For me, I feel like I can't -- I don't know. In the very beginning, like right after everything happened at Roland Garros, I was really scared to come back in here because I didn't know like what the energy was going to be like.

But I feel like the people that know me get what I mean, and I feel like we kind of established like a trust and kind of like a friendship-ish.

I think that I'm just going to keep being myself, and you can interpret it how you want to. That's kind of how it's been working out for us this whole time.

Q. I wanted to follow up on your goal about trying to just enjoy things and stay happy. How do you work towards that goal? How do you prepare? Is there anything you're doing to prepare in terms of like you would for a more tangible on-court goal about improving your forehand or something? How do you work on improving your mindset or expectations? What sort of goes into that process?

NAOMI OSAKA: Yeah, I think for me, I'm trying this out. Of course I'm not sure if this is going to work out well. I guess I'll let you know after this tournament.

For me, I think I'm just setting goals that I want to accomplish during the match because I feel like before I would go into a match, my only goal was to win. I didn't really care about improving as a player. I thought that would just come naturally.

I think this time around I'm setting mini goals so that I'm able to not focus too much on the win itself but how I'm improving as a player and how all the hours that I'm putting into practice is able to come into fruition.

Q. How do you reflect back on that break now and that time in your life and that time you did have away from the sport? How do you look back on that now?

NAOMI OSAKA: Honestly, it was much shorter than I anticipated. I actually really thought I wasn't going to play for most of this year. I think that I'm actually really -- I don't think 'proud' is the right word, but I'm really happy with myself that I love the sport that much because I literally said that I was unsure when I was going to play after the US Open, and I'm here right now, and that's what I did like two years ago. Honestly, I'm on the same schedule as I was, like this is a normal schedule for me.

But yeah, I think just in the break I was feeling kind of like I didn't know what my future was going to be. I'm pretty sure a lot of people can relate to that. Of course you never know what the future holds, but it was definitely a kind of indecisive time.

But I'm really happy to be sitting here right now.

Q. I'm curious, what were those last practices actually like, and at what point did you realize that you did want to come over and play, that it wasn't going to be as long as you initially thought?

NAOMI OSAKA: Well, I think the first few practices, they were for me really eye-opening because I kept telling myself I don't have to practice if I don't want to. I need to 100 percent be certain that this is what I want to do at this time, because if not, then it's a waste of Yutaka's time, my trainer, and Wim's time, because they fly to me for us to be able to practice and they could be spending time with their family.

It was kind of like I had to really tell myself to be committed in that moment. And I thought it was really like eye-opening. I felt like I have several goals that I want to accomplish this year, so I think maybe, maybe the off-season will pay off, but not so sure right now.

Q. On court you were saying you love New York, and we all know that, but there is something about Melbourne that you really do enjoy. I think I remember at the US Open during a press conference you had been asked about what motivates you at Slams, and you said, When I'm in Melbourne maybe I'll tell you what it is about the Australian Open that motivates. I'm wondering if you were in the mood to share that now that we're down here.

NAOMI OSAKA: I honestly think it's the people and the heat. I know those two don't really have a direct correlation, but I think just whenever I come here, literally every person that I encounter is so friendly and so nice, and I feel like that's a unique thing to Australia.

Aside from that, I feel like if you go into a country and you feel extremely welcome, there is a lot of pleasant feelings that come with that. I don't know, I'm very thankful for that.

I just love playing in the heat in Australia. I'm not sure why, but I just love feeling like I'm suffering, because I know that the other person is also suffering.

(Naomi's answers to questions in Japanese:)

NAOMI OSAKA: Honestly, I don't really think there's anything in my form or my technique that I changed at all. I think there are a lot of things that I'm trying -- we were trying to focus on during the off-season, so the backhand is definitely one of those things, and I'm a bit sad that I hit a lot of unforced errors today on the backhand and forehand side.

I feel like I can cut myself some slack because that was the first match, so hopefully I'll get more accustomed to being able to hit my shots the way that I want to.

I remember today I looked at my serve stats, and one of the things, it said like 27 percent for serve percentage, and that was kind of embarrassing. I think that those things come with me. I know that myself when it needs to be on, it will be on, but hopefully I will get myself in a situation where it doesn't have to be like life or death.

I honestly think there's never a match that I'm not nervous. I might be consistently nervous and I don't know it, but I think this match was a special one because it is the first match of the year, but also I'm kind of trying to find a way to play with how to feel calm and also be intense at the same time, and I think today I was a bit too calm. So hopefully I'll be able to balance it out more the next match.

I think the way that I was able to sort of bounce back from the second set to the third set, I felt that -- I knew the things that I did wrong the entire match, and it's just a bit hard to -- I'd say it's not capitalize, but it's a bit hard in the moment. Like you're constantly playing the point, and then after the point finishes you're assessing your performance.

I feel like a lot of tennis players know what I'm talking about when I say this, but I would say the difference between the second set and the third set was just like me taking more control of the point and being okay with losing points if I needed to.

The reason why I hope my team doesn't dislike me is because I probably traumatized them last year. Honestly there's a lot of things that were happening that I wasn't talking to them about, so it was kind of unfair to them, and I really appreciate them for sticking with me because I wouldn't want to be in my team last year. There was a lot.

I just really wanted to tell them that I was grateful, and if they still want to work together, then that would be amazing if they could come over and we could all hang out and hit balls and stuff.