Naomi Osaka Returns to US Open as a Champion and Fashion Entrepreneur

Naomi Osaka arrives at the US Open this year with a racket in one hand and a growing lifestyle empire in the other.

On Monday, August 31, the two-time US Open champion opens her 2026 campaign at Flushing Meadows against Anastasia Zakharova, stepping back onto the New York hard courts she knows better than any other surface. She calls it the one that feels most like home. It shows in the way she talks about it, and in the way this tournament has so often belonged to her.

Yet Osaka’s route to Queens has been anything but conventional.

A Late Scratch With a Very Clear Reason

She was a late withdrawal from the Cincinnati Open, an absence that initially carried the familiar label of “fatigue.” The real reason was far more personal, and far more revealing of where Osaka is in her life and career.

“I think people forget my main job is to be a mom,” she told reporters. “This [tennis] is kind of like my side hustle a little bit. I just happen to be really good at it.”

The decision was simple: more time at home with her three-year-old daughter, Shai. In a sport that rarely pauses, Osaka chose to hit the brakes herself.

That doesn’t mean she arrives undercooked. Osaka has banked plenty of match play this season and feels ready for the grind of a Grand Slam.

“I do feel like I’ve played a lot of matches… Honestly, this is the surface that I’m most comfortable with,” she said, sounding more like a player quietly circling a familiar hunting ground than a former champion chasing lost rhythm.

Court, Catwalk, and a New “Biggest Dream”

Since touching down in New York, the 28-year-old has leaned hard into another side of her identity: fashion entrepreneur.

Between practice sessions at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, Osaka slipped out to Southampton for the Fame to Fortune Summit, where she unveiled the next major project in her off-court portfolio — her own line of luxury accessories.

Osaka, long known for making a statement with what she wears onto court, is now designing the statement pieces herself. During a fireside chat, she held up a prototype of one of her new handbags and spoke about the brand as more than a side project. This, she said, is her “biggest dream” outside of tennis, as reported by Variety.

“Being a really good tennis player has given me a lot of amazing opportunities to invest and also just to surround myself with some really great people and I feel like that’s gotten me to this point where I want to create my own thing,” she told Fortune’s executive editorial director Diane Brady.

“It’s something that I want to pour all my energy into because I believe in it too with all my heart.”

The words land with the conviction of someone who no longer sees tennis as the only measure of success, but still understands that her forehand built the platform.

A Photoshoot in the House of Legends

Osaka’s New York week has already produced a different kind of highlight reel. Before hitting balls in earnest, she staged a fashion photoshoot across the US Open grounds — from the media room to the gym, turning the normally utilitarian spaces of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center into her own set.

“Whenever the ideas come in my head, I just really want to do it,” she said.

The images have the feel of a campaign, but Osaka insists there’s no grand strategy behind them.

“Honestly, like, nothing I do, I do to make a statement,” she explained of the photoshoots. “I think it just ends up being that way.”

That’s become part of her power. She moves on instinct, and the world tends to follow.

“But I literally do the things that I love to do, and I feel like people relate to it, and I’m really glad and grateful for that, because I feel like the type of person I am, a lot of people can see themselves in me. I really, honestly, I love that about myself.”

A Different Kind of US Open Campaign

So Osaka walks into this US Open in a rare position: former champion, young mother, emerging fashion founder, and still only 28.

She has a new boyfriend, revealed casually during her run at the Washington Open. She has a new brand in the works, one she wants to “pour all [her] energy into.” And she still has the same old New York hard court under her feet, the surface she trusts more than any other.

The question now is not whether Naomi Osaka can balance it all.

It’s what her game will look like when a player who once defined herself solely by tennis steps onto Ashe as a woman who no longer has to.