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Tennis ace Naomi Osaka has been the talking point of the town since she made a shocking decision to pull out of the ongoing French Open 2021. The 23-year-old had notably announced that she won't be attending press conferences at Roland Garros citing mental health reasons. She faced a lot of backlash for the same and as a result, decided to back out from the Grand Slam. And it has now been confirmed that Osaka is not planning to return to the court anytime soon as she has also withdrawn from this month's WTA grass-court tournament, set to be played in Berlin.
Osaka pulls out of Berlin tournament
World No. 2 will notably continue to take time off from tennis to take care of her mental health. "We have received notification that Naomi Osaka cannot start in Berlin. After consulting her management, she will take a break,” said a spokesman for the Berlin tournament which starts on June 14 onwards.
While the fans would believe that Osaka would have taken this decision to prepare for Wimbledon, it could actually turn out to be absolutely the opposite. The tournament in Berlin is the warm-up tournament to the major Grand Slam scheduled to begin on June 28 and the call by Japanese tennis ace has cast huge doubts over her involvement in Wimbledon.
There are a lot of question marks: Bartoli on Osaka
French tennis player Marion Bartoli also opined that Naomi might actually decide to pull out of the Wimbledon with how things have panned out in the last month. "I hope she is at Wimbledon for women’s tennis and tennis in general. She is such a huge star and she resonates around the world. But of course, there are a lot of question marks, we don’t know if she will be there,” said Bartoli.
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The 2013 Wimbledon champion also added that the players are supporting Osaka and confirmed that the WTA is trying to find a solution with the ITF so that she can be comfortable the next time she faces a press conference. Bartoli said, "They (WTA) are trying to find a way to narrow down to maybe three or four questions for Naomi’s press conferences."