Let’s start with a story. It takes place in Indian Wells, California at the BNP Paribas Open. Naomi Osaka was on one side of the net. A heckling was in the stands and let him go. And Osaka was visibly upset.
This story does not take place last Saturday evening – we will come back to it in a moment – but rather four years ago. Osaka faced Sachia Vickery in a first round match. Vickery, a young American inspired by the Williams sisters and who came to tennis not via country clubs but when her grandmother bought her a racket in a dollar store, brought a considerable section of fans to this great match. One of the members of his travel group was particularly noisy. Nothing personal. But he brought with him the same sensitivities as in a match of Rams, Dodgers or Lakers and began to break through the opponent.
Osaka was shaken. She cast a pessimistic look and began to cry. His coach of the time, Sascha Bajin, asked the supporter to stop. Taking advantage of the WTA rules which allow training during event matches other than major tournaments, Bajin entered the field and calmed Osaka. She would win the match. And the tournament. And the US Open Six months later, his breakthrough.
Osaka said she was suffering from depression after winning the 2018 US Open in a controversial final against Serena Williams.
Mark J. TERRILL/Associated Press
Since then, Osaka has won three additional major tournaments. She is at the top of the world ranking. She collected more than $ 100 million in support and turned on the torch at the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2020. And yet, she is disturbed by conflicts, confrontations and supporters’ supporters. Osaka said that she had suffered from depression since her victory at US Open in 2018 against Serena Williams and that she had moved away from sport in 2021 to take care of her mental health. Since then, its ranking has fallen in 78th and it now remains more than a year without winning a title. On Saturday, she played her second match at Indian Wells, against Russian Veronika Kudermetova. At the start of the match, a fan shouted“You suck.”
Because as well as Kudermetova played, Osaka never found her bearings after the fan’s remark. After losing 6-0, 6-4, she made the unusual decision to ask for the microphone on the ground. She then referred to a previous heckling moment at Indian Wells. It was not his 2018 match.
“To be honest, I have already been heckled, and that didn’t really bother me,” said Osaka. “But, like, heckled here?” I watched a video of Venus and Serena being heckled here, and if you have never watched it, you should look at it. And I don’t know why, but it came to my mind and it was much replayed. I feel like I have cried enough in front of the camera.
She referred to a 2001 weekend, where Williams sisters had been hooted by the crowd-much harder and hostile circumstances than one shouting fan, due to the The nasty racial current underlying that the sisters have endured. Although Serena survived the huts and won the tournament, the two sisters refused to play Indian Wells for the next 14 years.
After Osaka’s explanations on Saturday, she left the field and then jumped an post-match press conference.
Our world is binary, and the latter controversy has aroused two reactions. An omnipresent vision: Osaka was soft and weak and was entitled and a personification of the cultivation of snowflakes that have become crazy. The famous tennis enthusiast Jason Whitlock said: “A thousand cheers against a heckling. Fragile. Weak. Embarrassing. The news here is not that she was heckled. The news is that we have produced a culture that celebrates weakness and victim status. On the other hand: any other support than a total and unconditional support in Osaka lacked empathy and sympathy. She was the victim of verbal harassment. (The fact that she hinted that it was motivated by a racial animosity made the situation even more difficult.)
There was nothing extraordinary that a high -level athlete gets her game lost by a lonely heckling. However, while Osaka’s last controversy takes, as you would expect, its place in cultural wars, a more fundamental problem arises here: should Okaka move away more from the game and continue to The ultimate priority?
In Osaka’s own admission during the past year, conflicts and confrontations can cause him anxiety. It is a normal and understandable, even admirable feeling. But it is very problematic for an athlete evolving in a sector focused on competition. After all, it is confrontations and unforeseen moments that make sports what it is.
And the passion that sport permeates in fans – sometimes expressed by acclamations, sometimes by huts and heckling – is the reason why thousands of fans come into theaters and millions of people watch on television. (And, by extension, why are millions are paid to people who excel to hit balls with sticks.)
Howling “you are zero” to a perfect stranger can seem deeply incivorled, even hostile. But for a professional athlete, it is generally a professional risk. At best, this is a sign that people invest in the product.
At the top of his powers, there is no one better than Osaka. But she’s not here now. Not when a lonely heckling can enter “in my head”, provoke another defeat and, more importantly, another experience which seems to create a level of anxiety and misfortune.
Osaka spoke – admirably and at length – of its mental health and its stressors during the past year. She argued that it is not because an injury does not appear on an x -ray or an MRI that it is less real. And she is right. But according to the same logic, in the same way as an athlete suffering from a back pain or a no -healed knee might not be able to compete, it seems fair and reasonable to wonder if Osaka could devote more From time to absence to find answers by itself.
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