Wow. Naomi Osaki is refusing to do a single press conference at French Open. Says it impacts her "mental health" too much

this was the ideal result wrote:

She hoped the people in charge would cut her some slack. She asked. They refused. She said OK.

You have a weird definition of Asked.

The directors reached out to her multiple times and she ghosted them. Her sister confirmed it was to get a competitive edge on other players on her worst surface. Case closed.

Yawn^2 wrote:

An extended social media post comes across as attention seeking. Claiming social anxiety comes across as attention seeking (the same theming she claims she wants to avoid).

I have zero issues in the future if she works out deals where she doesn’t have to give interviews or gives 1 million of them. The only things here worth noting is following tourney and/or contract negotiations is important as is not looking like a fool while breaking them. If she wants to quit a tournament, then she has every right not to play. Just know there are potential consequences.

Except this strangely enough will be good for her brand. She is a minority and a female who self revealed problems with depression. She will gain sympathy and attention. A large number of people will be supporting her and rooting her on now.

Actually I hadn't seen much in the news about her till now. I see more commercials in her future.

However I do believe that she might have a mild depressive mood disturbance.

Instead of going through all this drama she should learn to handle interviews. It doesn't need to be the Marshawn Lynch approach, you just have to sort of ignore their questions and give brief answers. Platitudes are good crutches and you can prepare them ahead of time. The audience just wants some extra face time with the athletes (and they deserve it) but they don't care that much about what they say.

yawn3 wrote:

However I do believe that she might have a mild depressive mood disturbance.

She’s a phenomenal player. I def believe she has depression or anxiety. She doesn’t need the extra attention, her skills speak for her.

An odd way to go about, tho.

I wish her the best, but she can’t have it both ways. The press conferences are part of her job (contractual). Play and understand the rules or don’t show up. This smells of attention seeking.

Good for her. The post match interviews are intrusive and they catch the athlete when they are tired and unprepared. She shouldn't be penalized for a personal preference and her views should be respected. She is a very good young player.

LRC incel army smells blood

And even so, one-letter spelling error? Cheapest of cheap shots. Especially on here.

It seems like she signed a contract saying she'd speak to the press or get fined. She said she would honor her contract and pay the fine. They said, well, that's not good enough. We don't like the contract, and we're going to go after you. This makes me sympathize with her.

I also went through a mental health crisis about five years ago (precipitated by childbirth.) My employer was accommodating, and after about six months, I was fully back to my old self. I can't imagine if I'd had to experience that in the public eye. But the millions of dollars in income certainly would have softened the blow.

Sucks to see that tons of LRCers will go after a young athlete who has said that she struggled with depression/anxiety before ... Saying that she makes it up, she's dramatic, she should drop her contract , grow up etc... Almost like you guys enjoy seeing her fail :/ disappointing but not really surprising lol

Life can be hard for everyone, no matter their wealth/fame etc... and you can't really understand someone's mental health struggles unless you go through it (and even then, there are different degrees). It would be better if the first reaction was to have empathy instead of calling her a drama queen and going on about the contract ..

Something that people should really think about is what would happen if an employee were to handle a situation like this in their 9-5 job. Imagine walking into work and saying you won't attend company meetings because they gave you anxiety. It's likely this wouldn't go over super well. An employee would need to have internal conversations with their employer about the issues they're facing so that they can work together towards a solution. Unilaterally deciding what aspects of your job you will or won't do isn't going to fly. This being said, if the anxiety of performing a contractually obligated part of the tournament became too much, withdrawing was the right decision.

Now the conversation can shift to if it's really reasonable to deny her accommodations if she were upfront with the tournament about her concerns beforehand. Yes, media availability is likely to draw viewers, but now they're likely to lose even more viewers by her not playing. She was in a position where both she and the tournament knew that they wanted her playing and could have leveraged this knowledge towards the accommodations she needed.

She didnt seem to have much of a problem last year with media attention when she joined in the BLM protests. Her latter issues with the media seem a bit selective.

arunnerinwa wrote:

It seems like she signed a contract saying she'd speak to the press or get fined. She said she would honor her contract and pay the fine. They said, well, that's not good enough. We don't like the contract, and we're going to go after you. This makes me sympathize with her.

That's not quite right. Yes, a fine was the initial penalty. But the contract also makes clear that repeated violations will lead to more severe penalties, up to and including expulsion from the tournament and subsequent tournaments. They're following the contract, not saying "we don't like the contract."

As for Osaka, I think most people have more sympathy for her position now that she has linked it to her own personal struggles. But that's not how she initially framed it. She unilaterally announced what she was going to do, and then refused to communicate with the tournament organizers about it. You'd hope they would be open to making accommodations, but it's a little much to expect them to do so with no discussion or explanation, just an ultimatum.

this is what I have wrote:

Sucks to see that tons of LRCers will go after a young athlete who has said that she struggled with depression/anxiety before ... Saying that she makes it up, she's dramatic, she should drop her contract , grow up etc... Almost like you guys enjoy seeing her fail :/ disappointing but not really surprising lol

Life can be hard for everyone, no matter their wealth/fame etc... and you can't really understand someone's mental health struggles unless you go through it (and even then, there are different degrees). It would be better if the first reaction was to have empathy instead of calling her a drama queen and going on about the contract ..

This. And this is the legacy of this board, allowing free, uncensored*, anonymous posting which the admin completely consent to, overt or tacitly by intentional policy decisions. And, in turn, is why most players in the sport's upper levels choose to not acknowledge LRC or the personalities behind it. Get with the times, LRC, and stay classy.

arunnerinwa wrote:

It seems like she signed a contract saying she'd speak to the press or get fined. She said she would honor her contract and pay the fine. They said, well, that's not good enough. We don't like the contract, and we're going to go after you. This makes me sympathize with her.

Nope. No one was "going after" anyone, but I can see why that might make a good story for some (big bad tennis tournaments terrorizing poor scared girl). The tournaments pay these players huge sums of money, and something as simple as a press conference is not a lot to ask of the players. The tournaments can't start being selective about who gets a pass and who doesn't, fielding dozens of requests from players who want to skip the press for various reasons. Has to be a uniform approach. She's no more special than anyone else.

The funny thing about all this is that now even more eyes are going to be on her when she eventually does do another press conference. Maybe that's what she ultimately wants.

lemurboi wrote:

Something that people should really think about is what would happen if an employee were to handle a situation like this in their 9-5 job.

I don't think it's particularly relevant to compare to people in other jobs. Different people have different amounts of bargaining power. Everyone needs to play their own hand rather than worrying about how some other person with some other hand would have to play.

what is "hental health"?

I think you are right. She made 5 million +/- in tennis earnings last season and 50 million in endorsements. Not really a typical employment situation. She is a great young player and it's very likely she will have it her way and leverage her strengths. The rabid pursuit of top players (who are humans first and foremost with feelings and personalities) is ignored by the media. They can adapt to her. I'd rather see the tennis anyway and skip any of the interviews.