Naomi Osaka

After being heckled by a fan at Indian Wells, it seems fair and reasonable to ask whether the women's tennis star could use more time away to find answers ...

At best, it’s a sign people are invested in the product. There was nothing out of the ordinary about a top-tier athlete getting thrown off her game by a lone heckler. By Osaka’s own admissions over the past year, conflict and confrontation can cause her anxiety. The news is we’ve produced a culture that celebrates weakness and victimhood.” On the other baseline: Anything other than full-throated and unconditional support for Osaka was found lacking in empathy and sympathy. On Saturday, she was playing her second match at Indian Wells, against Russian Veronika Kudermetova. Early in the match, a fan yelled, “You suck.” (That she implied it was motivated by racial animus made it all the more fraught.) She has hauled in more than $100 million in endorsements and lit the torch at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. And still, she is unsettled by conflict and confrontation and partisan fans. She then referenced a previous moment of heckling at Indian Wells. It was not her match from 2018. But he brought with him the same sensibilities he would to a Rams or Dodgers or Lakers game and began to yap at the opponent. 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 at a Dollar Store—brought a considerable fan section to this big match. And the tournament. It takes place in Indian Wells, Calif., at the BNP Paribas Open. Naomi Osaka was on one side of the net.

Naomi Osaka leaves the court in tears after her second-round loss at Indian Wells. Clive Brunskill/Getty Images. Naomi Osaka's history at ...

What’s relevant is that Osaka is still drawing that connection in her mind, mid-match, upon hearing the kind of nondescript remark she has likely brushed off dozens of times in the past. As a competitor, she’s a long way from the mindset that wins seven matches in a row, the high standard she’s set for herself. Osaka asked to use the mic to address the crowd—a long shot—and was denied. After Osaka dropped her first service game, a heckler in the crowd shouted, “Naomi, you suck!” Osaka asked the chair umpire to eject the heckler from the crowd, and the umpire declined. She thanked them, and explained that the heckling caused her to replay in her mind the infamous, stadium-wide booing of the Williams family in 2001, which traumatized the sisters so deeply that they refused to compete at Indian Wells for over a decade. When she returned to the desert in 2019, she was already the No. 1 player on tour.

Tennis star, Naomi Osaka, was rattled during her match at BNP Paribas Open on Saturday night after a woman in the stands yelled “Naomi, you suck!”.

“We put intense amounts of pressure and scrutiny on athletes to perform. Spectators reacted to the derogatory remark and Osaka asked the chair umpire to ask that something be done. The undercurrent of racism was painful, confusing and unfair. How can we as people from the outside help? When Venus and their father Richard took their seats to watch Serena in the final against Kim Clijsters, the crowd began booing. The Williams sisters were heckled by fans at Indian Wells in 2001.

Osaka wanted to address the crowd shortly after the heckler yelled at her, but was denied by the umpire.

That came after Osaka refused to participate in post-match press conferences during the Grand Slam tournament. "I just want to say, 'Thank you,'" Osaka said after the match. She even pulled out of the French Open in order to take a mental health break.

Tennis star Naomi Osaka was brought to tears Saturday night by a heckler at Indian Wells. It's important to understand why she was so upset.

I want her to play. We want to see her play. Before the tournament began, Osaka said she felt like she was at peace with herself. That leads to the sports equivalent of road rage, where fans take out their hostility on the nearest target. I want her to be happy. Navratilova also said Osaka would have to “toughen it out somehow” in the future and said Black players Althea Gibson, Chanda Rubin and Zina Garrison had endured tougher experiences in the sport than Osaka has had. Did long months of COVID isolation make us forget how to behave in public and play in the sandbox with other people? The sisters said they were traumatized and stayed away from an event that prides itself as being just a small step below the four Grand Slam events in popularity and stature. Retired tennis great Martina Navratilova called it “heartbreaking” that someone would insult Osaka and also that Osaka had been affected so deeply. “Naomi, you suck!” came the cry from above the court in Stadium 1 at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden. Osaka, who has been admirably open about battling depression and took a long mental-health break last year, became tearful and agitated. The words had a piercing clarity in the silence dictated by tennis custom. Lakers teammate Carmelo Anthony asked for the ejection of two fans at Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia after he said they called him “boy.” Austin Rivers of the Denver Nuggets, angered by insults targeting his family during a game in Oklahoma City, had two fans ejected from their courtside seats.

Naomi Osaka loves tennis, but tennis doesn't seem to love her back. Osaka is in the news again, and again, it's not for something she's accomplished on the court, but for something that's happened to her at her workplace. Over the weekend, Osaka lost ...

Ironically enough, between the dominance of the Williams sisters and Osaka’s transcendence, tennis is the only global sport that’s been ruled by Black women for the last three decades and counting. “In my last match, the semifinals, I was set to play my sister, but Venus had tendinitis and had to pull out. So if Indian Wells damaged Williams, you can only guess what Osaka went through on Saturday, triggered by the flashback of what happened to Venus and Serena when she was only three years old. I think I’m going to take a break from playing for a while,” she said. Osaka is in the news again, and again, it’s not for something she’s accomplished on the court, but for something that’s happened to her at her workplace. In January, we were reminded of when Novak Djokovic took an unnecessary shot at Osaka last spring because she wanted to pay a fine rather than do press conferences after matches. The visual of a young Black and Asian woman being treated this way, in the same place where Venus and Serena Williams were once belittled, can’t be ignored. It’s just a cog in the system. “I walked out onto the court, the crowd immediately started jeering and booing,” Serena Williams wrote for Time Magazine in 2015 about what happened to her at Indian Wells in 2001. “I remember sitting in the bathroom thinking, ‘Wait, I’m not gonna go back. “But [being] heckled here, I watched a video of Venus and Serena [Williams] getting heckled here, and if you’ve never watched it, you should watch it. Osaka requested that the fan be removed and even wanted to address the crowd, but she wasn’t allowed to do so until after the match.