United Cup: Four-time grand slam winner Naomi Osaka opens up on motherhood as she targets strong 2026 season

Four-time grand slam winner Naomi Osaka believes motherhood has evolved her career, but admits there is still a balancing act between being a parent and a professional as she aims to build on last year’s renaissance. Osaka’s 2026 campaign and Australian Open preparation officially begins on Friday night when Japan take on Greece on the opening night of the United Cup at RAC Arena. With a hit-out against former world no.3 Maria Sakkari on the agenda before a blockbuster showdown with British former US Open champion Emma Raducanu on Sunday, Osaka is guaranteed at least two high-quality singles matches in Perth. And as she targets a further rise up the ranking after reminding the tennis world of her prowess in 2025, Osaka believed Perth would be a great platform to start her season. The 28 year-old won one grand slam a year from 2018-2021 which included a pair of Australian and US Open titles each, before taking maternity leave in 2023. While 2024 was not quite the emphatic return she hoped for as she failed to progress beyond the second round of any of the four grand slam events and ended the season ranked 59th in the world, Osaka exploded back into form last year. She was a finalist at the Auckland and Canadian Opens, but most impressively reached the US semifinals and knocked out women’s world no.3 Coco Gauff along the way. But after finishing her strong season as the world no.16, Osaka said her off-season priority was not just recovering from the lengthy campaign, but also spending time her two-year old daughter Shai. Since having Shai, Osaka said she had felt the tickle-down impact on her own career and was learning more and more about her self. “It’s evolved my career just by shifting my mindset a lot. If you knew me before, you would know that for me, I would take everything so seriously — I would say my losses and my wins defined how I viewed my worth as a person,” she said. “Now I’m just taking it, every day is like a new opportunity to do better. “But at the same time, I know that my biggest role isn’t a tennis player, it’s to be a mum to my daughter. “I’m really happy that I was able to learn that, and I’m just excited to see what more I can learn from her.” The trick for Osaka is finding a way to weigh up focusing on her career while also being the best mother possible and she admitted it was still a work in progress. “It’s definitely really tough. This off-season was quite difficult for me as well, just because you try to be there for her all the time, and obviously there are moments where you have to practice or you have to do something, and it is really difficult,” she said. “But I hope that I’m managing it, or I’m juggling it well, and I also hope there’s going to come a time that she understands why I did the things I did.” Osaka’s return to something resembling her best tennis came adjacent to Switzerland’s Belinda Bencic, who is also in Perth for the United Cup after her own first full season back following maternity leave. Bencic started 2025 ranked 913th in the world, but ended it as the world no.11 after a fourth-round appearance at Melbourne Park last January and most notably, surging to the semifinals of Wimbledon. Osaka said her own daughter was never far from her thoughts, but also acknowledged she had arrived in Australia with a job to do; namely, build on her 2025 performances. “There are so many incredible mums on tour. We were just on the court, and Bencic had her daughter there. I thought that was really cute, and it made me think of my daughter as well,” Osaka said. “But I’ve passed that point, and now I’m just going towards my next goal, which is obviously to do well in Australia, and then obviously the grand slams coming up.” Osaka could have played the Auckland Open again as her first tournament of the year and even went as far as signing up for a trip to New Zealand. But when the United Cup opportunity came knocking, Osaka opted to rescind her decision in favour of representing her country — particularly when it came with the guarantee of two tough singles matches. “I’ve always watched the United Cup on the TV, and I’ve wanted to play for a long time. I’ve been to Perth once before, when it was the Hopman Cup,” Osaka said. “Another important part of playing United Cup is being able to play the best players in the world straight off the bat, which I think is a privilege. “I really enjoy matches like that, I enjoy playing in really big arenas, and I just feel like it’s going to be really fun.”