OFF THE COURT

Tennis Player Shares Struggles With ‘Extremely Bad’ Post-Partum Depression

Naomi Osaka said that she didn’t know how to deal with her depression after giving birth.

Naomi Osaka is opening up about the mental health struggles she experienced after giving birth to her daughter in 2023. “Honestly, I also had extremely bad postpartum, and I didn’t know how to deal with it that well,” 27-year-old Osaka said in a clip from the upcoming documentary Naomi Osaka: The Second Set. “I felt like a shell of myself at all moments of the day,” she added. “It felt like everyone else had moved on, and they were living in color. Meanwhile, my world was stuck in gray.” Osaka welcomed her daughter, Shai, in July 2023 with her ex-boyfriend, the rapper Cordae. She said in the documentary that she was “one of those people that thought when I had a kid I would stop playing tennis.” However, the four-time Grand Slam champ returned to the WTA Tour just five months after giving birth. Osaka has long spoken openly about her experience with depression, and took time away from tennis in 2021 to focus on her mental health. She will take the court on Tuesday in the first round of the U.S. Open, where she memorably upset Serena Williams in 2018 to claim her first major title.