By Estea Rademeyer, Sports Journalist Live from London.
Photo Credit: AELTC/David Cliff.
Naomi Osaka walked onto Court One on Friday dressed like she was headed for a runway rather than a tennis match, and then proceeded to play like the surface underneath her had stopped being a problem. The 14th seed dismantled Daria Kasatkina 6-1, 6-3 to reach the Wimbledon fourth round for the first time in her career, pairing one of her most complete performances of the grasscourt season with an outfit striking enough to draw its own headlines.
It’s the fashion, in many ways, that has come to define Osaka’s Grand Slam appearances lately. The four-time major winner has leaned hard into designer collaborations over the past few tournaments, treating each walk-on as a fresh concept. In Melbourne earlier this year, it was a jellyfish-themed look with a wide-brimmed hat, veil, and parasol; in Paris, a sparkling gold design nodding to the Eiffel Tower carried her to the fourth round. At Wimbledon, she opened with a Tokyo designer’s tribute to Japanese paper-cutting and ceremonial dress, complete with detachable layers and embroidered cranes, before scaling things back slightly for round two. Friday’s version, an embroidered jacket with a floaty, tiered train, was, by her own admission, part of a deliberate plan to keep changing things up outfit by outfit each round.
Naomi Osaka (JPN) ahead of her match against Daria Kasatkina (AUS). Photo Credit: AELTC/Joel Marklund.
She’s been candid about the nerves that come with the attention. Osaka has said the boldness itself is partly the point, a way of getting comfortable with being watched, tracing it back to the umbrella-and-veil moment in Australia that she described as throwing herself in headfirst.
None of it seems to be distracting from the tennis, which is the more surprising story. Osaka built her entire career, and all four of her majors, on hard courts; clay and grass have traditionally been where her power game goes quiet. That pattern has been breaking down all season. Five weeks ago she reached the fourth round at Roland Garros for the first time. Last month she made her first-ever grasscourt final, at Bad Homburg, only to retire injured early in the second set against Karolina Muchova. Rather than derailing her, that run appears to have handed her real confidence on the surface; she hasn’t dropped a set through three rounds this year.
Photo Credit: AELTC/David Cliff.
Friday’s opening set against Kasatkina was close to flawless: six unforced errors, only five points lost on her own serve. The Russian rallied briefly in the second, erasing an early break, but Osaka shut the door quickly, winning three straight games to close it out. “I felt really confident,” she said of her form on grass, pointing to the volume of matches she’s played on the surface over the past fortnight.
It’s a rare sustained run for a player who, since returning from maternity leave in 2024, had advanced past the second week of a major only once. Between 2018 and 2021 she won two Australian Opens and two US Opens; this fourth-round finish is a small but meaningful marker that the old hard-court specialist label might no longer tell the whole story.
There was a lighter moment after the match, too. Osaka’s daughter Shai turned three on Thursday, and Osaka joked to the crowd that the birthday hadn’t gone entirely smoothly, a trip to the park had ended in a time-out, before adding that Shai had blown out her candles and made a wish, which Osaka hoped was “to behave better.”
Up next: a fourth-round meeting with world number one Aryna Sabalenka on Sunday, the toughest test yet of whether this grasscourt form is here to stay.