Naomi Osaka reacts during her fourth round match against Coco Gauff at the 2025 U.S. Open in New York City on Sept. 1, 2025. Credit - Sarah Stier—Getty Images Acouple of years agoNaomi Osaka, the four-time Grand Slam champion who last won the U.S. Open in 2020, came to Arthur Ashe Stadium as a spectator, just two months after giving birth to her first child, daughter Shai. Osaka was in New York City with Olympic championMichael Phelpsto participate in aforum, along with then U.S. surgeon general Vivek Murthy, on mental health in sports. The next evening, she watched AmericanCoco Gauffbeat Karolína Muchová in the semifinals, during Gauff's run to the 2023 U.S. Open title. In that moment watching Gauff, Osaka, now 27, had doubts as to whether she'd be able to play at such a high level again. But she could still picture returning to Arthur Ashe Stadium, late in a U.S. Open, to compete for another major championship. "Maybe I'm crazy or something," Osaka said after dispatching Gauff, the third-ranked player in the world and the defending French Open champion, 6-3, 6-2 in a Monday fourth- round match that took barely an hour to complete. "But I always feel like you have to imagine it, and then you have to believe it for it to actually come true." "You're also speaking to the kid that visualized playing Serena too," Osaka went on, referencing her memorable2018 breakout win over Serena Williamsin the U.S. Open final. "So I feel like there's a lot of power in dreaming and believing." She needed all of it. Since winning the 2021 Australian Open, Osaka had trouble returning to the top after public challenges with her mental health and other difficulties. She's said she had "extremely bad" postpartum after Shai's birth, and since returning to pro tennis in 2024, she'd reached the third round of a major championship just twice before this year's U.S. Open: in fact, Osaka has been bounced out of the first round of last year's Australian and U.S. Opens, and this year's French. In the press conference following that loss in Paris, she made a reference to her then-coach Patrick Mouratoglou, who used to work with Serena Williams. "He goes from working with, like, the greatest player ever to, like, 'What the (expletive) is this?'" Osakasaid. She walked away in tears. Osaka's performance, however, at this year's U.S. Open should go a long way toward eliminating any uncertainty—self-inflicted or otherwise—about her chances to win again. Her decisive victory over Gauff, Osaka's successor as the highest-paid female athlete in the world, puts Osaka in the quarterfinals on Tuesday, against 11th-seeded Karolina Muchovia of Czechia. Four times, Osaka has reached the quarterfinals of a major tournament. All four times, she's won the championship. Osaka'sinfluencein athletics is secure: another run to the title, after becoming a mom and taking a few years to find her rhythm, would just add flourish to her legacy, both on and off the court. In protest of the 2020 police shooting of Jason Blake in Wisconsin, Osaka—who is Black and Japanese and grew up in the U.S. but competes under the Japanese flag—announced she would not play her next match: the entire tournament soon paused before Osaka and others returned to compete. During her run to the U.S. Open championship that year, she memorably wore facemasks bearing the names of a Black victims of alleged police or racist violence. The next year, she pulled out of the French Open to tend to her well-being, a decision thathelped destigmatizemental health struggles in sports. "It's O.K. to not be O.K.," Osakawrote in a TIME essayafter the 2021 French Open. At the same time, critics derided her stance and the subsequent decision of U.S. gymnastSimone Bilesto back out of the all-around competition at that year's Tokyo Olympics, where Osaka lit the cauldron, for her mental well-being. Osaka has continued to serve as a lightning rod in some circles: during this year's Canadian Open final, she failed to congratulate Victoria Mboko on the court following their match, which Mboko won. Criticscalled her out.Osaka later said she inadvertently forgot to do so. That Canadian Open, in Montreal in July and August, seemed to turn Osaka's season around. She points to a second round match against Liudmila Samsonova, in which she saved two match points, as a key moment. "I was really frustrated for a long time because I felt like I was playing well, but there was just something that I don't know if I was missing or it was just, like, a mentality thing," said Osaka. "Then I played Samsonova, and I didn't give up until the very last point. Obviously, I ended up winning that. I think from that moment on I just tried to be the biggest fighter that I can be." As strongly as Osaka performed in her highly anticipated duel with Gauff, the American contributed to her own undoing in the match, with 33 unforced errors to Osaka's 12. Before the U.S. Open, Gauff made the surprising decision to switch coaches, bringing on biomechanics expert Gavin MacMillan to fine-tune Gauff's struggling serve. And while Gauff served well—she only double-faulted five times (to Osaka's zero), matched Osaka's ace count (3 each), and even hit more first-serves in than Osaka (66% vs 42%) while essentially matching her first-serve speed (104.1 miles per hour compared to 104.8 miles per hour for Osaka)—the parts of her game in which she had the most confidence, groundstrokes and service return, faltered. "I woke up today thinking, 'Oh, this is going to be a good day for me where I'm going to play well,' and then out there I just don't know what happened," Gauff said after the match. "I felt so discombobulated on the court, because it's, like, I'm serving well, but not returning well. The last two years everybody can agree that's like a weird thought." Gauff's partnership with MacMillan is in its infant stages, and with her serve already showing signs of improvement, and her age–21–portending potential prime years ahead for her, she promises not to hang her head too long after losing to Osaka. "I am not going to let this crush me," Gauff said. When it comes to resilience, Osaka can now show Gauff the way. Osaka hasn't let the disappointments and detractors of the last nearly five years derail her. She's clearly enjoying herself in New York. On Monday she revealed her latestLabubu, a sparkling plush toy from theviral Chinese company Pop Martthat she named Althea Glitterson (other bejeweled Labubus accompanying her at the U.S. Open include Billie Jean Bling andArthur Flashe). With Gauff out of the tournament, Osaka is certain to be the sentimental crowd favorite in the women's draw going forward. Her comeback story is just too compelling. "This is my favorite court in the world," she told the Ashe Stadium fans after the match. "And it means so much to me to be back here." Write toSean Gregory atsean.gregory@time.com.
