Naomi Osaka news: Former world No 1 admits players need to be ‘thick-skinned’

Criticism, negative opinions and heckling are sadly “a price that successful people pay” with former world No 1 Chris Evert saying Naomi Osaka will need to develop a thick skin.

Four-time Grand Slam winner Osaka cried after she was heckled by a fan at the Indian Wells Open in early March. After the match she told spectators “I just wanted to say thank you, I feel like I cry enough on camera”.

The incident came after a difficult 2021 campaign for the Japanese star as she withdrew from the French Open in order to protect her mental health while she also finished her season early as she opted to take a break after her US Open exit.

Osaka, though, revealed after the Indian Wells tournament that she had started to see a therapist while the likes of Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray admitted that heckling is sadly part of sport.

And 18-time Grand Slam winner Evert is in agreement with them.

“We are all fans of Naomi Osaka and we have seen the high level of tennis that she can play and we have seen her win Grand Slams,” she told Eurosport.

“We recognise that she is a very sensitive person and this kind of life of winning tournaments, being No 1, winning Grand Slams, this competition with everything that comes along with it, being sort of a target for anybody to talk about, being judged and social media, how your privacy is taken away from you.

“It is not just playing a match on the court, it is everything that goes along with it. It has been a struggle for her and I think that she is just sensitive and she is just vulnerable.

“You have to have thick skin, that’s a reality and that’s not a criticism. If you don’t have thick skin, you can develop thick skin because you’ve got to understand that if you are this successful, you are out