CNN
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Former global Negative. 1 Naomi Osaka intends to go back to skilled tennis in 2024, the 25-year-old mentioned in an interview with ESPN on Wednesday.
The four-time main champion – who welcomed a baby girl in July along with her boyfriend, rapper Cordae – mentioned she plans to play games a hectic time table then 12 months.
“It’s definitely way more tournaments than I used to play,” Osaka told ESPN. “So, I think some people will be happy with that.”
“I think it’s because I realized that I don’t know how the beginning of the year is going to go for me. I don’t know the level of play and I think I have to ease into it. So at the very least, I’m going to set myself up for a very good end of the year,” Osaka mentioned.
Osaka, who has no longer performed for the reason that Toray Pan Pacific Unmistakable in Tokyo in September 2022, has previously said she deliberate to go back to tennis in 2024 for the Australian Unmistakable, a match she has gained on two earlier events.
Osaka used to be requested if her crack from tennis made her omit it, to which she answered “definitely.”
“I’ve been watching matches and I’m like, ‘I wish I was playing too,’” Osaka mentioned. “But I’m in this position now and I’m very grateful. I really love my daughter a lot, but I think it really fueled a fire in me.”
Osaka took at some point clear of aggressive tennis and made a number of extremely publicized disclosures about her struggles with mental health following an incident in 2021, the place she used to be visibly stressed out and emotional time addressing the media throughout a compulsory information convention at Roland Garros.
She due to this fact pulled out of the French Unmistakable that 12 months and unmistakable she had “suffered long bouts of depression” since profitable her first main championship in 2018.
Osaka used to be in attendance at the USA Unmistakable in Unused York on Wednesday. She additionally participated the similar past in a discussion board on psychological fitness on the USTA Billie Jean King Nationwide Tennis Heart, joined via USA Olympic swimming legend Michael Phelps, US Surgeon Normal Dr. Vivek Murthy, and Dr. Brian Hainline, chairman of the USA Tennis Affiliation’s board and NCAA prominent clinical officer.
Osaka mentioned she discovered a dozen from speaking about her studies with psychological fitness and turning into an recommend for psychological fitness consciousness.
“I feel like I am someone that’s learning all the time. Obviously, I learned a lot from the talk as I was talking,” Osaka mentioned. “I might say my position is solely elevating consciousness and letting population know that they’re no longer rejected.
“Physical pain and mental pain are sort of the same to me. We have doctors for physical health but when we talk about mental health it’s not as well received, so just raising awareness on that.”
She used to be additionally requested about her feedback up to now that she felt “lonely” time she used to be pregnant.
“I definitely only know this world, the tennis world,” Osaka mentioned. “Just being away from that for a long time, it was new for me. I think it was just the new situation and not being able to train like I wanted to, it made me feel like I would just stay at home. … It felt like a lot of restrictions.”
