Beating Serena Williams, Firing Her Coach

The timing couldn’t be more perfect for a biography on tennis superstar Naomi Osaka. After a break starting in September 2022 and the birth of a daughter, the reinvigorated 26-year-old returned for her first tournament at the elite level this past week. Unfortunately, her big comeback ended in a second-round loss to three-time champion Karolína Plíšková in the Brisbane International, but Naomi was unfazed: “Ngl that was really fun though,” she wrote after the match.

Shrugging off a loss might not seem like a big deal for a top-tier athlete who is used to performing in high-pressure situations, but for Naomi, it’s notable—this is the woman whose mental health became an international conversation after her 2021 French Open withdrawal and her many public spats with reporters, hecklers, and critics.

All of that and more is recounted in journalist Ben Rothenberg’s new book, Naomi Osaka: Her Journey to Finding Her Power and Her Voice (Jan. 9). The deeply reported bio traces the athlete’s roots as a “super-shy” Serena Williams wannabe to a four-time Grand Slam singles champion. Below, see some of the book’s best bits and revelations.

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As a kid, her dad was so consumed with his daughters’ tennis careers that people called the police on him.

Rothenberg writes extensively about how Naomi’s parents, Leonard and Tamaki, used Serena and Venus Williams’ careers as blueprints for their two daughters, Naomi and Mari. For Leonard, that included taking a page from Richard Williams’ playbook and coaching his kids with an iron fist.

“Tamaki has said onlookers and park administrators repeatedly called police on the family to interrupt the long hours Leonard spent training his daughters on the courts,” the author writes, adding that Tamaki chalked that up to discrimination, since tennis was, and still is, a predominantly white sport. But it also speaks to Leonard’s obsession; he had no full-time job, and instead spent all his time on the tennis court with Naomi and Mari (along with making a few independent short films in his spare time).

Naomi’s tennis success became her family’s financial lifeline.

In 2014, Naomi’s parents were given an eviction notice from their condominium in Florida and were told they had a month to move out. Tamaki was working long hours at multiple jobs to continue earning for the family and subsidizing her daughters’ tennis dreams, but their earnings weren’t enough to cover the expenses of traveling to tournaments. Naomi didn’t have any paying sponsors at the time, and had made only $6,000 through the first six months of the year.

Just four years later, though, Osaka won her first WTA title at Indian Wells and used the $1.34 million prize money to help her mom retire.

Money probably factored into…