Two days after No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz announced that he would not be able to take part in the Australian Championship, this morning (Sunday) we received another big name that will be absent from the first Grand Slam of 2023 – former champion Naomi Osaka.
The Japanese, who previously won the Australian Championship twice (2019, 2021), did not explain why she decided to withdraw her name from the draw for the tournament that will start in eight days. “Naomi Osaka has retired from the Australian Championship. We will miss her. Diana Yestremska will take her place in the main draw,” announced the organizers of the competition.
Osaka, who also did not participate in the preparatory tournaments in Australia, has not played on the tour since September and dropped to 42nd in the world rankings. The Japanese previously had to take a break from the industry due to mental difficulties, although it is still unclear whether these difficulties caused her retirement this time as well.
Osaka’s announcement comes three days after the world media reported that she had “disappeared”. It was reported on CNN that the heads of the tournament are concerned because the actress has not contacted them and does not respond to their inquiries, and expressed “concern” about her situation following the unusual and unprofessional behavior. The Japanese has already expressed many times throughout her career how much she finds it difficult to deal with the pressures of the industry, and at Roland Garros 2021 she even withdrew from the tournament after she asked not to attend press conferences and talk to the media.
She has also been inactive on Instagram for some time and disappeared from the radar, but recently uploaded several photos from her trip with her singer partner Corday, with whom she toured Europe in October. According to “The Guardian”, following Osaka’s retirement “concern is growing about her situation”, after she did not contact representatives from the tennis world and did not prepare for the tournament. “The fact that at the age of 25 she is not showing up for the tournament in Melbourne in this way only increases the fear that she will no longer return to the tennis courts,” the Guardian wrote about the Japanese, who has won only one match since last May, and in the three previous tournaments she lost in the first round.
* Another player who will not take part in the Australian Championship is Venus Williams, who was supposed to compete in the doubles tournament but she is suffering from an injury.