Osaka Says She Is Close to Her Best Form and Has Thought About Retirement

Naomi Osaka said on Sunday that she feels close to the form that won her four Grand Slam titles, and in the same breath admitted she has thought about retirement and does not know how long she will keep playing.

"It's tough, sometimes I look towards my future and wonder how long I'm going to play," Osaka told reporters, in remarks reported by Reuters. "Because if my daughter did say she didn't want me to travel as much, I'm not the type of person to ignore that."

The 29-year-old former world number one returns to the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo next week as the seventh seed. She stepped away from tennis for 15 months after the birth of her daughter before coming back in 2024.

The results behind the confidence

Osaka is ranked 19th in the world. Her season has real results behind it: a quarter-final at Wimbledon, where she beat top seed Aryna Sabalenka, last-16 runs at the French Open and the US Open, a semi-final in Washington and a quarter-final in Toronto.

"I genuinely don't feel like I'm that far off," she said of contending for titles again. "I think I built a pretty solid base and I'm excited to see if I can continue learning and going further in tournaments."

Tokyo next

Osaka opens her Tokyo campaign against Italy's Jasmine Paolini. World number one Elena Rybakina headlines the field, and Alex Eala of the Philippines also plays.

The two halves of her Sunday comments are the story. The tennis case is built on this season's results, and it is solid: wins over the top seed at Wimbledon do not happen by accident. The retirement talk is not about form. It is about travel, a young daughter, and a line she has drawn in advance: if her daughter asks her to travel less, she will listen. Players rarely name their exit condition out loud. Osaka just did, and then went back to talking about the next tournament.

A comeback measured in rounds, not weeks

Her return has not been a straight line. She came back in 2024 after 15 months away, and the ranking she holds now, 19th, was built round by round across two seasons. This year's pattern is consistent: she is reaching the second week and the last eight at the events that matter, including two Grand Slams, and she is beating the players ranked above her when the draw puts them in front of her, as Sabalenka found at Wimbledon. That is the base she described on Sunday. Tokyo, a home event where she is seeded seventh in a field led by the world number one, is a fair test of whether the base now converts into a title run, and she will be measured against Paolini first.