If you may recall, Naomi Osaka had a rough 2021 tennis campaign. The young phenom, who is currently in a fruitful relationship with burgeoning rapper Cordae, decided to take a brief mental health break from her beloved sport after some rough outings.
She skipped out on Wimbledon, shed some tears during press conferences and took a tough loss representing her country Japan at the Olympics. After making her return to the court in November, she has slowly been regaining her footing as one of the best women's tennis players.
However, over the weekend, things hit a rough patch again. On March 12 during her match in the BNP Paribas Open, better known as the Indian Wells Masters in Indian Wells, CA, she experienced a heckler yelling at her "You suck!"
This led to a pause in the action so Naomi could compose herself as she was emotional. During this break, she had hoped to find the disruptor and have them removed, asking the official if that was possible: What if someone was to point in her general direction?"
She would eventually lose the match against against Veronika Kudermetova 6-0, 6-4, as her performance was clearly affected by the mishap. After the match, she got ahold of the microphone for an interview, where she decided to get some stuff off her chest. She said the heckler reminded her of a similar event that happened to the Williams twins at the same venue before: "I just wanted to say thank you. I feel like I've cried enough on camera. But I just wanted to say I've gotten heckled before, like it didn't really bother me. But being it's being heckled here, I've watched Venus and Serena being heckled here, and if you've never watched it you should watch it. I don't know why but it went into my head and it got replayed a lot. I'm trying not to cry, but I just wanted to say thank you and congratulations (Veronika). Thank you."
Check out the video of her interview below.
