The Japanese tennis star is fighting to get back to the top of the world rankings after a long maternity leave. However, her tennis year 2024 is over due to injury.
Japan’s tennis star Naomi Osaka will not return to the tennis court this season due to injury. The four-time Grand Slam winner announced this on Monday in the wake of her withdrawal from the WTA tournament in Hong Kong at the end of October.
Osaka had previously announced that she would not be able to participate in the Billie Jean King Cup in mid-November due to a torn abdominal muscle.
“I’m really sorry that I won’t be able to play at the Hong Kong Tennis Open or for the rest of the season,” Osaka said in a statement from the tournament organizers. The event in Hong Kong would have been the penultimate one for Osaka this year before the Billie Jean King Cup in Malaga. Most recently, the 27-year-old had already missed out on her home tournaments in Osaka and Tokyo.
Discontinuity of the intervertebral disc and muscle tear
“I thought I had strained my back, but I had an MRI scan done in Beijing and they said that I had bruised a disc in my back and also torn my abdominal muscles,” Osaka said of her injury, according to the Japanese news agency Kyodo. On October 1, she was knocked out in the round of 16 in Beijing by Coco Gauff (USA), who is ranked third in the world.
Osaka first played for the Japanese Billie Jean King Cup team again in April 2020. In the duel with Kazakhstan, the Japanese qualified for the final round of the Nations Cup in Malaga, Spain, from November 13 to 20.
Since her return to the tour after the birth of her daughter Shai, Osaka has been fighting to regain her place among the world’s best. It has been more than three and a half years since her last major victory at the 2021 Australian Open.