Naomi Osaka: Japan’s tennis ace in date with destiny 

The last time the Olympic Games took place on Japanese soil at Tokyo 1964, there was no tennis competition. Helen Wills of the United States - a legend of the game who did not lose a set in a singles match between 1926 and 1932 - was the last Olympic champion, crowned all the way back in 1924 at the Paris Games.

It would take a further 44 years before tennis was back on the Olympic programme - and then only as a demonstration sport, for one Olympics in Mexico City in 1968. Twenty years after, tennis again officially returned to the Olympics at Seoul 1988 and it has been a feature of the calendar at every Games since.

However, in eight editions of the Games, between Seoul 1988 and Rio 2016, Japan have only won one tennis medal, the bronze NISHIKORI Kei brought home in 2016. Nishikori will return to Tokyo 2020 and the expectations of the Japanese public will once upon lie on his shoulders in the men's competition.

But there is one Japanese star, perhaps more than all the others, the world is waiting to see in action at her home Olympic Games: Naomi Osaka.

Japanese to the core

Naomi Osaka was born in 1997 in Chuo ward of the Osaka prefecture, a destination steeped in history that was the site of the first capital city of Japan.

Her mother, Tamaki Osaka, is Japanese, while her father, Leonard Francois, is of Haitian descent. Instead of the surname of her father, Osaka and her older sister Mari took the family name of their mother.

At the age of three, the young Osaka moved with her family to the United States and she has lived there ever since, first in Long Island, New York and later in Florida, drawn by the better training opportunities the Sunshine State afforded the up-and-coming tennis star.

However, that kinsmanship with Japan never left Osaka, even after spending most of her life in the USA.

"I don’t necessarily feel like I’m American. I wouldn’t know what that feels like," said Osaka in 2018. In an interview with the Washington Post, her mother went further in explaining why Osaka represents Japan instead of the United States.

"We made the decision that Naomi would represent Japan at an early age," she said. "She was born in Osaka and was brought up in a household of Japanese and Haitian culture. Quite simply, Naomi and her sister Mari have always felt Japanese so that was our only rationale."

After turning pro at age 15, Osaka has enjoyed a meteoric rise through the ranks of professional tennis. Establishing herself as a formidable big-game player, she is one of only three people in history to have won every one of her first four Grand Slam titles. Now, 20 years after leaving Japan, she has the chance to fulfil a "special desire" to win an Olympic medal on home soil. And she couldn't be more excited about it.

“It would honestly mean the world to me to bring home a gold in Japan," she told Business Insider in June. “I think it would take some time to fully sink in, but to be able to win a gold on my country’s soil, knowing the youngest generation is watching – it makes me emotional to know I have the opportunity to make an entire generation inspired and an entire country proud.”

Tokyo 2020 prospects

Ranked no. 2 in the world, Osaka enters the tournament among the favourites. She has won a Grand Slam title every year since 2018, including the US Open on two occasions (2018, 2020) and the Australian Open (2019, 2021). Ominously for her opponents, every one of those titles has come on hard courts - the same surface the Olympic tennis competition will take place on.

However, it's fair to say the road to Tokyo 2020 has not been without its challenges.

In May 2021, Osaka withdrew from the French Open after opening up about her recent mental health issues. She also missed Wimbledon for the same reasons.

Osaka has always been steadfast in her desire to compete at the Olympic Games, however in order to strike gold in Tokyo she will need to get past some formidable opposition.

Fresh off of a win at Wimbledon, where she became the first Australian since Evonne Goolagong Cawley in 1980 to triumph there, Ash Barty enters the Tokyo 2020 tennis tournament as world no. 1 and in the form of her life. At age 19, Poland's Iga Swiatek is also a strong contender for the title, having won the 2020 French Open and shown her ability to rise to the big occasion.

Also standing in her way will be Tunisia's Ons Jabeur, who has enjoyed an excellent season where she became the first Arab woman to win a WTA title when she triumphed in the 2021 Viking Classic Birmingham.

Other players who will have their eyes upon that coveted Olympic crown include Argentina's Nadia Podoroska, a semi-finalist at the 2020 French Open, and Ukraine's Elina Svitolina who has a career-high ranking of No. 3.

First round first

Osaka's Olympic journey begins in earnest at 11 am on 24 July, as she takes on People's Republic of China's ZHENG Saisai on the centre court of Ariake Tennis Park. The Chinese athlete has a career-high WTA ranking of 34, with a current rank of 52 in the world.

If history is anything to go by, it won't necessarily be an easy match for Osaka. The two players have met three times in the past, with Osaka holding a 2-1 win record over Zheng. On hard courts, the players are even more evenly matched, with one win-a-piece, although Zheng's only victory came over six years ago when she triumphed over the Japanese athlete in 2015.

Most recently, Osaka and Zheng met in the second round of last year's Australian Open, where the former won 6-2, 6-4. However, Zheng's defensive sliced returns made the match far from a walkover, with Osaka later admitting:

"I definitely got very frustrated in the second set. And it's something that I knew would happen but I didn't know exactly what she would do to make me frustrated.

"She was slicing and dicing and I was like, can I just hit a winner already and she was like, no."

If Osaka should make it past Zheng - as the whole of Japan will be willing her to do - she would face the winner of Switzerland's Viktorija Golubic, ranked no. 48 in the world, and Colombia's María Camila Osorio Serrano.

From there, Osaka will need to be at very her best to triumph in a stacked women's competition that includes 15 of the world's top 20 players.

The Tokyo 2020 women's tennis competition begins on 24 July 2021 with the final taking place on 31 July.