Osaka on French Open interviews: No comment

I wish I'd seen the virtual fight! Good times.

And you're right about Osaka. She owes no one anything. I've never once expected her to change her mind, or for her to be viewed as an outlier and shamed into dutifully appearing at the podium. This is the future and the future is now. That said...

I don't quite understand this, especially from people in the biz. I sensed a lot of empathy for Osaka when all this started. I think enough people in the business are dealing with anxiety and depression to understand someone who hated press conferences taking steps to avoid them. And I like to think 98% of the people in the business (and on this board) would ask nothing more awkward than "why'd you lose when you were up four-love in the second?" It's the best of both worlds, attention-grabbing schtick which has gotten stale, as well as the nonsense of athletes using the mainstream media boogeyman as a good common enemy while spending far more time reading and absorbing far worse shit on social media than they'd ever hear from a bunch of middle-aged donks. It's silly.

 

Osaka says she gets horrible anxiety over those post-match news conferences. She has dropped out of majors to avoid doing them.

This thread is filled with journalists essentially calling her a liar and explaining why she’s clearly just faking it. It’s pathetic. Having done a piece with Sports Illustrated is not a ‘gotcha’ on this one.

And not to belabor the point, but from the athlete’s perspective there is absolutely no reason to do those post-match news conferences beyond “I’m just here so I don’t get fined.” There is virtually no benefit to them at all. If it’s causing her enough anxiety to pull out of a tournament it’s absurd to think she should do it.

 

I don't think anyone is calling her a liar. I do think we/they are pointing out her flawed logic. If you don't want to do it, don't do it. Going everywhere to talk about why you're not doing it is straight from the page of the MAGAts who have to generate more attention for themselves by telling everyone why they're not watching pro sports anymore or why they're burning all their Taylor Swift CDs or whatever they're doing in between plotting insurrections. But if the last five years have taught me anything, it's that I never should have taken that intro to logic class in college almost 30 years ago.

 

“Flawed logic” isn’t really a worthwhile dismissal of mental illness — and when you go on to suggest she’s doing this for attention, you’re essentially calling her a liar.

I suspect Osaka gets all the attention she wants. She doesn’t need to drop out of the French Open to get attention.

 

Osaka doesn’t want to do what she doesn’t want to do when it comes to media. The only impediment to that…are the Grand Slam events threatening to disqualify her if she doesn’t do press conferences. That’s it. That’s all.

Her beef is with the grand slams and perhaps the tour. They control the events. Unless she creates her own tournaments she controls, she either has to do what they ask, or they relent, or, behind door no. 3, the media gets mad on her behalf and pressures the slams into doing whatever she wants.

what I’ll be watching is, when the US Open rolls around, whether American sports columnists and the NYC press stump hard for her. I think they will, and I think she’ll win her media battle, at least here. French and British press may not be as accommodating.

 

British press can huff my taint. At least the tabloid wankers. Sports included.

 

Who's she going to have to battle in NY? The Daily News is 95% extinct. The Post will have a columnist or two. Same with Newsday. Maybe the Times? I dunno. There'll be a bunch of harmless dot coms, weeklies, etc, largely just happy to be there. TV crews have a minute to fill. This isn't 1991, neither she nor the tour are going to run into much resistance if she doesn't want to talk.

 

Agree with you on this element. It’d take me some thinking to imagine an issue inconsequential enough for the sports media to influence these days.

 

She and the tour are not on the same side in this or, at least, they haven't been so far. The media itself is damn near immaterial. I think three things:

1. Her initial messaging was bad and also a mistake; she knew after the fact she was much too harsh to a media corps that I suspect has been unusually good to her. She wants the media rules to change to what, say, Beyonce enjoys. She doesn't really do interviews anymore.

2. She's sincere enough in her sense that public speaking gives her anxiety, she's not good at it, and, like many millions of people, deals with depression.

3. It's pretty clear she has a team of people who have been very ambitious in getting her involved in things - magazine covers, that Time essay, the documentary - and she may, like many celebrities, struggle to say no. There's no one-size-fits-all playbook for soldiering through this - Lord knows I couldn't be famous, I'd be awful at it - and she'll learn just as others have.

 

This is a good take. Her issue isn't the media, per se. It's the tour. The tour requires these interviews and, as I said a while ago, it's policy because not so many years ago the WTA was begging for coverage and accessibility of athletes is/was one path to that. Back in the day, I covered an LPGA event every summer. It was always fun. With just a few exceptions the players were very outgoing and approachable. Good stories were to be found everywhere if you just listened.

 

Naomi Osaka wins first-round match at Olympics, then breaks her silence with media

 

Of course she did. She’s not going to shit on the media from the host country for which she plays.