Naomi Osaka arrives at the US Open this year with a racket in one hand and a very different kind of ambition in the other.
On Monday, August 31, the two-time US Open champion opens her 2026 campaign against Anastasia Zakharova at Flushing Meadows. It is familiar territory for Osaka, a stage where she has twice owned the night and reshaped the sport’s conversation. Yet the story around her this time is bigger than a first‑round match.
‘My main job is to be a mom’
Her preparation for New York did not follow the usual script. Osaka pulled out late from the Cincinnati Open, initially citing fatigue. The real reason was far more personal: time at home with her three-year-old daughter, Shai.
“I think people forget my main job is to be a mom. This [tennis] is kind of like my side hustle a little bit. I just happen to be really good at it,” she told reporters.
That line landed with the kind of clarity Osaka has long brought to press rooms. She is not easing away from tennis; she is reframing it. The tour is no longer the center of her universe, but she still intends to dominate her orbit.
Osaka, now 28, insists she feels ready. The match count is there. The confidence on hard courts, her natural habitat, remains intact. “I do feel like I’ve played a lot of matches… Honestly, this is the surface that I’m most comfortable with,” she said during her summer swing, which also included a headline-grabbing run at the Washington Open and a casual revelation that she has a new boyfriend.
From baseline to runway
Once she landed in New York, the rhythm of her week told its own story. Practice at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, then a quick change of gear and a trip out to Southampton. Osaka has always treated fashion as more than a hobby; now she is turning that instinct into a business.
At the Fame to Fortune Summit, she announced the next step: her own line of luxury accessories. On stage, she held up a prototype of a handbag from the forthcoming brand, describing the project as her “biggest dream” outside of tennis, according to Variety.
“Being a really good tennis player has given me a lot of amazing opportunities to invest and also just to surround myself with some really great people and I feel like that’s gotten me to this point where I want to create my own thing,” Osaka told Fortune‘s executive editorial director Diane Brady.
“It’s something that I want to pour all my energy into because I believe in it too with all my heart.”
For years, Osaka has walked onto court in statement outfits designed by others. Now she is positioning herself as the one creating the statement pieces, using the same precision and personal touch that turned her into a global star.
Owning the stage in Queens
The US Open has always suited Osaka’s personality: loud, restless, unafraid of spectacle. This year, she has leaned into that even more, turning the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center into a kind of dual set — half training ground, half fashion studio.
Before and after practice sessions, she posed for photos in the media room, the gym, and around the grounds, each look carefully considered yet, in her telling, entirely instinctive.
“Whenever the ideas come in my head, I just really want to do it,” she said.
“Honestly, like, nothing I do, I do to make a statement,” she added of the photoshoots in and around the venue. “I think it just ends up being that way.”
That has always been Osaka’s paradox. She insists she is not chasing the spotlight, but it follows her anyway — on social issues, on mental health, on motherhood, and now on fashion and entrepreneurship.
“But I literally do the things that I love to do, and I feel like people relate to it, and I’m really glad and grateful for that, because I feel like the type of person I am, a lot of people can see themselves in me. I really, honestly, I love that about myself.”
On Monday night, the attention snaps back to the lines and the scoreboard, to serves and returns against Zakharova. Yet even as she steps onto Ashe with racket in hand, Osaka is walking in as something more than a contender in a draw. She is a mother, a founder, a designer in the making — and a player who still believes the court where she feels most at home can also be the launchpad for everything that comes next.
