Naomi Osaka is back to shining on the US Open stage

NEW YORK — There have been times recently in Naomi Osaka’s career where she appeared unhappy. But even in those moments — the fall in the rankings, the depression, the struggles in her return from having a baby — she never thought about walking away.

“I’ve been playing this sport since I was three,” Osaka said Sunday. “I tell people it’s like breathing air to me. I wouldn’t really know what to do.”

Osaka proved Monday why she’s chosen to hang around and overcome the adversity she’s faced in recent years as she overpowered the tournament’s No. 3 seed, Coco Gauff, in an easy 6-3, 6-2 win in their highly anticipated rematch from the 2019 US Open.

With the upset win Osaka, the No. 23 seed, faces No. 11 seed Karolína Muchová in a quarterfinal match on Wednesday.

For Osaka, just call the win her “allow me to reintroduce myself” moment to a venue where she’s won two of her four majors.

“I can’t really speak too much on the second week of a major, because this is my first time back here,” Osaka said of reaching the second week of the US Open for the first time since winning her second title here in 2020. “I feel really relaxed. I don’t feel stressed at all. For me, whatever happens the rest of this tournament… I’m just trying to be a better tennis player and learn from every match that I play.”

What Osaka clearly learned from her match Monday is that she can once again shine in a big setting against the top players in the world — and have fun doing it.

As Osaka prepared to serve late in the second set and a fan yelled “c’mon, Coco,” she was unfazed by the rude disruption, breaking a smile as she glanced into the upper reaches of Arthur Ashe Stadium where the scream originated.

“What I want to take away from this tournament is just smiling and having fun,” Osaka said. “Going into this match, I just wanted to be grateful. She’s one of the best players in the world. For me, honestly, I have the most fun when I play against the best players.”

At the time of that 2019 US Open match against Gauff, Osaka was the top-ranked player in the world and appeared capable of assuming the dominant player throne that Serena Williams had long occupied. What followed, however, was a stretch of mental illness that led her to walk away from the 2021 French Open after a first-round win, followed by opting out of Wimbledon later that summer.

Osaka returned to tennis in 2022 but announced days before the 2023 Australian Open that she was pregnant, which led to a one-year hiatus.

While her return to tennis was rough (and well-documented in the documentary, “Naomi Osaka: The Second Set” that was released last month), Osaka showed signs of getting back to form at the beginning of this year when she reached the finals of the Auckland Open — her first final since 2022.

Osaka credits reaching the final of the National Bank Open in Montreal in August as a turning point in her confidence.

“I had a match in Montreal where I had to save two match points,” Osaka said after Monday’s win over Gauff. “Ever since then I started thinking anything is possible.”

While Osaka appears to be in the midst of a career revival, Gauff — despite being just 21 years old — seems to be in the midst of a career crisis. She won her second career major in the 2025 French Open, but followed that with first-round losses in consecutive tournaments.

Gauff fired her coach just days before the US Open, a shocker coming from the No. 3 player in the world. She looked far from dominant in advancing to the fourth round, and the unsteadiness in her game showed against Osaka as she had 33 unforced errors, 20 of those coming on her forehand.

“Off the ground I think I just made way too many mistakes, way too many errors, which I feel like that’s the part of my game that I felt the most confident in coming into the tournament,” Gauff said. “For sure it was not the level that I wanted to bring.”

What’s next for Gauff? She has a commitment to play in the China Open later this month in Beijing. After that she’ll return to the lab to work with her new coach, Gavin MacMillan, who introduced a new service motion to her game prior to the tournament.

“It’s just improvement mode to get ready for Australia,” Gauff said of the Australian Open in January, the first major of the calendar year. “Whatever happens for the rest of the year, I just want it to be improvement.”

As Gauff won the US Open in 2023, television cameras caught Osaka — who had given birth several months earlier — sitting in the crowd.

Osaka was asked if, on that night, she could have imagined beating the 2023 champion.

“Maybe I’m crazy or something, but I always feel like you have to imagine it, and then you have to believe it for it to actually come true,” Osaka said. “But you’re also speaking to the kid that, like, visualized playing Serena [Williams] too. So I feel like there’s a lot of power in dreaming and believing.”

The most exciting aspect for Osaka, who has needed wild card entries to get into tournaments this past year?

 “I don’t need a wild card to enter tournaments anymore,” Osaka said. “I think I’ll be seeded in, like, the Indian Wells, Miami type of tournaments, so that’s what I’m happy about.”