By Chris Oddo | Thursday December 6, 2018
Naomi Osaka exploded onto the tennis scene in 2018 on the court and she was pretty dominant in the press room as well.
Photo Source: AP
Welcome to the inaugural Tennis Now 25, where we celebrate the best popcorn moments of the 2018 tennis season, and award 25 “Popcorn Awards” to honor the most breathtaking and memorable performances of 2018.
About the Awards:
The #TN25 is designed not simply to remember the best matches, comebacks or Grand Slam performances. What we aim to accomplish here is to dig deeper into the archives so that we may celebrate some of the more offbeat and difficult-to-quantify performances.
This is our first time doling out these awards, and our attempt to veer away from the typical year-end rundown is genuine in that we feel it echoes the season of giving. What we aim to give is praise and thanks to those who made the season memorable on many levels...
Surely, with this being a new process for our editorial staff, there will be a few bumps along the road. Here and there we suspect that our valued readership may find a few things to disagree with (suprise!). If that’s the case, take to social media using the hashtag #TN25 and tell us what we missed or where we could have done better.
As the players like to say after they win their titles--none of this would have been possible without you guys, and that’s why we are going to put some of the awards to a Twitter vote in December, so stay tuned for that.
But for now, we must get to the awards…
Best in Press: Naomi Osaka
The Best in Press goes to the player who was the most entertaining interview in press conferences.
And the winner is... Naomi Osaka
Press conferences are magic for the die-hard tennis fan. And in this day and age, fans are given more access to previously exclusive press conference footage than ever before. This is a great development because it enables fans to watch and form their own opinions on today’s stars, rather than rely on reporters for snippets that are often taken out of context or incomplete.
If you watch carefully on social media these days, you’ll find that what the players say in the press room often garners more attention than what they do on court. That’s because today’s sophisticated fans don’t just want to see backhands and forehands, they want to kick the players’ tires and get to know the merchandise on a more intimate level. Hey, if you are going to spend hours and hours following a player and giving die-hard support, you better spend some time getting to know that player before you pledge allegiance.
In 2018, no player consistently passed the press conference muster than Japan’s Naomi Osaka. As the 21-year-old stepped into the spotlight and locked down giant titles at Indian Wells and the U.S. Open, she was regularly thrust into the media maelstrom and rose to the occasion every single time.
Not only was Osaka the quirkiest, most unique interview on a consistent basis (we knew that was going to happen in 2017 when she went viral with a strange press conference remark about Mesothelioma), she unwaveringly offered up her vulnerable side to the world, touching on mental health issues and proving to be a genuine and candid interviewee despite the shyness that we could all see in her.
That’s what most captivated us about Osaka; we know how tough it is to do 50 or so press conferences a year, many times when you’d rather be doing something else. But doing it when you are a painfully shy teenager? That's hitting the next level. We also realized that if Osaka had had her druthers she probably would have stayed off-camera and off-microphone as much as possible, but instead she showed a willingness to share some of her deepest doubts at difficult times, further endearing herself to fans and media.
Since winning the U.S. Open Osaka’s sponsor portfolio has grown and, yes, much of it is due to her on-court prowess and the fact that she is the first Japanese player to ever win a Grand Slam singles title, but there’s more to the picture when it comes to Osaka. With her personality and her fresh approach to player-media relations, she is breaking the mould and amplifying the realness quotient that so many stars have trouble with or simply ignore.
Osaka can go from being a joker, saying she hired her coach Sascha Bajin because he sprained his ankle five minutes into their first hit together, to being a deep, sincere and emotionally available person, admitting that when she hugged Serena Williams at the net after their controversial U.S. Open final she felt like a little kid again.
There were many brilliant press conference moments in 2018, and Osaka isn’t the only player who was consistently brilliant. Novak Djokovic deserves props for his wisdom, spirituality and eagerness to debate hot topics. Sloane Stephens has matured and offers a bit less than she used to, but make no mistake—she can light up a room. Role model Serena Williams has wisdom and a finger on the pulse of these troubling times, both in American and abroad, while Alexander Zverev is second to none and making a reporter feel dumb (fans especially appreciate this skill).
But from city to city and week to week, nobody rocked the press room like Naomi Osaka did in 2018. She put herself out there, for better for worse, and tennis was most certainly better for it.