Naomi Osaka Returns to US Open as Champion and Fashion Icon
Naomi Osaka walks back into New York as both a former champion and a very different kind of headliner.
On Monday, August 31, the two-time US Open winner opens her 2026 campaign against Anastasia Zakharova, returning to the hard courts at Flushing Meadows with a full calendar, a full heart, and a life that no longer revolves solely around tennis.
‘My main job is to be a mom’
Osaka’s final stop before New York was supposed to be the Cincinnati Open. Instead, she pulled out late. The initial explanation was fatigue. The real reason was far more personal.
She wanted to be home with Shai, her 3-year-old daughter.
“I think people forget my main job is to be a mom. This [tennis] is kind of like my side hustle a little bit. I just happen to be really good at it,” she told reporters, a line that landed like a mission statement for this stage of her career.
That doesn’t mean she is drifting into this US Open undercooked or uncertain. Osaka, who casually revealed during her run at the Washington Open that she has a new boyfriend, sounds as ready as she’s been since her comeback.
“I do feel like I’ve played a lot of matches… Honestly, this is the surface that I’m most comfortable with,” she said, leaning on the hard courts that have always brought out her best.
New York, but make it fashion
Once she touched down in New York, Osaka didn’t just disappear into practice courts and hotel rooms. She leaned into the other arena where she has become a genuine force: fashion.
Between training blocks at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, she slipped out to Southampton, where she announced the next step in her evolution off the court — her own line of luxury accessories.
Osaka has long treated the walk onto court as a runway moment, mixing bold colors, clean lines, and sharp silhouettes that often set the tone for tournaments. Now she’s moving from muse to maker.
At the Fame to Fortune Summit, she unveiled a prototype of one of her new handbags and spoke about the project with the kind of conviction usually reserved for Grand Slam goals. She called the brand her “biggest dream” outside of tennis, according to Variety.
“Being a really good tennis player has given me a lot of amazing opportunities to invest and also just to surround myself with some really great people and I feel like that’s gotten me to this point where I want to create my own thing,” Osaka told Fortune’s executive editorial director Diane Brady.
“It’s something that I want to pour all my energy into because I believe in it too with all my heart.”
The phrasing was telling. This isn’t a vanity line slapped together between tournaments. For Osaka, it sounds like a second career being built in real time, parallel to her push back up the rankings.
Serving looks at Billie Jean King National Tennis Center
Her fashion week started early — right at the US Open venue.
Before practice sessions in Queens, Osaka turned the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center into a backdrop. The media room, the gym, the corridors: all became part of a rolling photoshoot that underscored just how naturally she moves between athlete and style figure.
“Whenever the ideas come in my head, I just really want to do it,” she told reporters.
She insisted there’s no grand strategy behind the imagery that floods social media when she’s in town.
“Honestly, like, nothing I do, I do to make a statement,” she said of the photoshoots in and around the grounds. “I think it just ends up being that way.”
The impact, though, is obvious. Osaka’s choices — from outfits to words — tend to ripple far beyond the baseline.
“But I literally do the things that I love to do, and I feel like people relate to it, and I’m really glad and grateful for that, because I feel like the type of person I am, a lot of people can see themselves in me. I really, honestly, I love that about myself.”
It is a rare thing in elite sport: a player comfortable enough in her own skin to say that out loud, on the eve of a major, with expectations quietly rising again.
On Monday, the spotlight swings back to the tennis. The serve, the forehand, the familiar roar of Ashe. Yet this version of Naomi Osaka arrives with more than a title defense on her mind — a daughter at home, a new relationship, and a luxury label in the works.
The question now is simple: how far can she go when her “side hustle” returns to center stage?
