Naomi Osaka buries former coach Sascha Bajin as she breaks silence on split – and it’s no more Miss Nice Girl
- Asia’s first world No 1 working with Japan Tennis Association coach Masashi Yoshikawa in Dubai
- Australian Open champion says she wasn’t willing to sacrifice her happiness by keeping Sascha Bajin around
After a week of growing speculation over why she split with coach Sascha Bajin, Naomi Osaka could hold her tongue no more.
“I’m not going to say anything bad about him because, of course, I’m really grateful for all the things that he’s done,” Osaka said at a press conference in Dubai, where she will play her first tournament since winning the Australian Open.
“I wouldn’t come here and say anything bad,” she added. But the normally shy and awkward 21-year-old went on to verbally bury the WTA Coach of the Year on his way out of the door, even if she didn’t intend to.
No more Miss Nice Girl – the world No 1 isn’t playing around any more.
“If I’m not waking up every day happy to practice and happy to be around the people I’m around, this is my life,” Osaka later told WTA Insider.
“I’m not going to sacrifice that just to keep a person around. I have to be happy with where I am at my life. I feel like I worked really hard – maybe not for 21 years, but for 17 years – to be No 1 and to win grand slams.”
The 21-year-old is without a coach for the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, but revealed she will begin her search for Bajin’s replacement after the tournament in the UAE.
Asked what qualities she is looking for in his replacement, Osaka’s answers were revealing – and damning for Bajin.
“The biggest thing is I don’t want myself to think to be successful I have to put success over happiness, because if I’m not happy being around certain people I’m not going to torture myself,” Osaka told WTA Insider.
“So I’d rather just surround myself with people that I really like and that truly care about me and are just really positive. I think I’ve been able to do that.”
That classic millennial signifier of a broken relationship – unfollowing each other on Instagram – is what first tipped off tennis sleuths that not all was well between Osaka and Bajin in Melbourne.
The split was still a shock after Osaka rose from No 72 when she bean working with the German at the start of 2018 to the top of the WTA rankings a little over a year later following back-to-back grand slams.
“I think during Australian Open, I was just trying to tell myself to get through it,” Osaka said. “I’m not sure, but I think you guys noticed.”
Another hint at an irreparable discord was Osaka’s odd comment thanking Bajin for “hitting a ball with me these past two weeks” after winning in Melbourne.
It is believed Osaka and her family believed Bajin – a former hitting partner of Serena Williams, Victoria Azarenka and Caroline Wozniacki – was something of a lightweight as an actual coach.
Japanese media reported the relationship between the two was already broken at the start of the year and that they barely practised together in Melbourne.
Another rumour was that Bajin felt he wasn’t being compensated well enough for his role in Osaka’s incredible success, but Osaka shot that one down.
“Everyone thinks it was a money-related issue, but it wasn’t,” she said in her press conference. “That’s one of the most hurtful things I’ve ever heard. I travel with everyone on my team, I see them more than my family. I would never do that to them.”
Her father, Leonard Francois, who is on Osaka’s coaching team, and mother Tamaki Osaka were said to be very involved in the decision to dispense with Bajin, while her Japanese sponsors were said to be in her ear as well.
That might explain the sudden more visible presence of Japan Tennis Federation coach Masashi Yoshikawa on her team in Dubai.
“Yoshikawa-san is not really my coach-coach,” Osaka told WTA Insider. “He’s just been helping me since I was 16. He’s one of the people that knows my game the most. He’s always around at certain tournaments, he’s always helping.”
Osaka hopes to have her new coach in place by Indian Wells in March – a tournament she also won with Bajin, for her first title – but for now seems to have found peace and happiness.
“Compared to Australia, I feel really happy now,” Osaka said. “That’s the funny thing because I heard some people saying I looked really sad in Australia every day.”
