Follow The Athletic’s live coverage from Day 9 of the French Open.
PARIS — Naomi Osaka’s fashion statements have caused such a stir at the French Open that the Japanese star spends nearly as much time talking about her skirts as she does her tennis game these days.
Not that she minds. When asked if she had a fresh look to debut, after sashaying out for her three matches thus far wearing three different iterations of designer jackets and skirts atop her sparkly gold Nike dress, Osaka grinned.
“You guys keep asking, and I keep providing,” Osaka said in a news conference Saturday. “Why are we still asking?”
Good thing Osaka plans in advance. On Monday, she will face world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka in her first career appearance in the fourth round of the French Open. The blockbuster bout will be the first women’s match featured in a night session at Roland Garros since 2023, and just the fifth overall since the French Open added them in 2021.
Osaka has a night session outfit ready to go. Of course she does.
Aside from bringing the off-court self-expression she finds essential to surviving the slog of an 11-month tennis season, Osaka’s sequined outfits have been a shiny distraction here in Paris. On Saturday, she reached the fourth round of the French Open for the first time in her career with a 7-6(5), 6-7(3), 6-4 win over 18-year-old American Iva Jović, during which she flexed some veteran muscle. She hadn’t so much as made it past the second round since 2019.
But between her clothes and the seismic upsets that have lent a wacky bend to this tournament, Osaka’s career milestone slipped through with relatively little fanfare.
The four-time Grand Slam champion’s time under the radar ends Monday, when all eyes will be on her match with Sabalenka. After an eight-year gap between their first meeting in 2018 and their second this March, Osaka has now played, and lost to, Sabalenka twice this season. She took a set off of her at April’s Madrid Open, before the world No. 1 bounced back.
“I’m just ready for the fight. I’m ready to go out there to fight for that match, for that win,” Sabalenka said in a news conference.
Osaka expressed a slightly different attitude when she learned in a news conference Saturday that Sabalenka would be her next opponent.
“I didn’t know that, so I don’t know. YOLO. Like, whatever,” Osaka said.
“I feel like I played a pretty good match in Madrid. I think I just dipped in the second and third set. Hopefully, just keep the consistency and keep trying to be aggressive. Whatever happens, happens.”
Aryna Sabalenka defeated Naomi Osaka in their most recent meeting on clay, at the Madrid Open in April. (Ibrahim Ezzat / NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Spoken like a true underdog — even if she has the same number of Grand Slam titles on her resume.
Sabalenka outplayed Osaka in their first meeting this year, at the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells. The match was buzzy because the two titans of the power-play era hadn’t met in so long, and because there was agency drama off-court.
Osaka and Sabalenka share a history with Evolve, the boutique sports management company Osaka founded with her agent Stuart Duguid in 2022. Osaka left Evolve to return to sports marketing giant IMG in December, while Sabalenka, who left IMG to sign with Evolve in January 2025, stayed on.
“I just feel sorry for her that she moved from Evolve back to IMG. I don’t think that’s a smart decision to do,” Sabalenka said in a news conference at Indian Wells.
“I’m happy, I’m super happy that now all the time that they were kind of like, how you say, balancing between and Naomi, now I [get] most of the time. I’m happy with that.”
Osaka shrugged off the comment. “Her experiences aren’t the same as mine,” she said.
Osaka’s power game has been popping in the sun and heat at Roland Garros, and on Saturday, she leaned on her big serve to both get out of tight spots and intimidate Jović, who is 10 years her junior. She hit 12 aces, and her first serve reached 123 miles per hour.
But danger creeps in, now that the heat has broken. Power players can fade in the cold on red clay, where the air gets heavy and absorbent dirt gets softer and slows down the court. It requires much more effort to whack the ball with force, and even then, the speed of the ball is blunted. Sabalenka and Osaka both rely on first-strike play, but Sabalenka has more comfort at the net and more variety in her play, giving her more tools if the ball isn’t quite sending through the court like she wants.
Naomi Osaka is into the second week of the French Open for the first time. (Robert Prange / Getty Images)
Still, Osaka is having the most focused and zen clay-court stretch of her career. Her French Open preparation wasn’t interrupted by injury, as it has often been in the past, so she got three matches apiece at the Madrid and Italian Opens. Iga Świątek, a master on slow, cool clay, rolled her at the latter, just as she has done to plenty of players.
“I think I’m just a lot calmer now. I feel like in the previous years I just wanted it so much,” Osaka said in a news conference. “And now, obviously I do want it, but I accept that it’s a process, and maybe it will eventually come and maybe it won’t. I just have to enjoy it while it lasts.”
This is also her first clay-court swing with coach Tomasz Wiktorowski, with whom Świątek won three French Opens. He’s injected a good shot of self-belief into her arm as she competes on the surface she likes the least.
That confidence has helped her find escape routes out of tight sets. Donna Vekić pushed her to a tiebreak in the first set of their second-round match Thursday, and Jovic’s relentless but controlled aggressiveness helped her keep pace until Osaka dialed up her serve.
“I just keep thinking of a stat Tomasz told me. I don’t know if it’s accurate, but it’s been helping me out a lot. … He basically said Nadal has won 98 percent of his matches here, and he’s only won, like, 50 percent of the points,” Osaka said.
“I just thought to myself, I don’t have to win every single point, but I just have to try every single point, and hopefully it goes in my favor. That’s basically it.”