Naomi Osaka

📍Osaka, Japan

“Naomi Osaka was born in Osaka, Japan's great commercial city, in October 1997. Her mother, Tamaki, is from Nemuro in Hokkaido, and her father, Leonard François, is from Jacmel in Haiti; they had met when he was a student in Hokkaido, and her mother's family initially disapproved of the relationship. Naomi and her older sister, Mari, spent their first years in Osaka. In 1999, watching Venus and Serena Williams on television, Leonard decided that his daughters would become tennis players, following the example of the Williams sisters' father, though he had played little tennis himself. When Naomi was about three, the family moved to the United States to live with her father's parents in Elmont, on Long Island, New York. Her father trained the girls on public courts using books and videos, making them hit thousands of balls a day, and her Haitian grandparents became an important part of her life. She grew up between cultures, Japanese at home with her mother, Haitian with her father's family and American at school, and she has spoken about feeling like an outsider in all three. In 2006 the family moved to Broward County, Florida, where the girls trained full-time on public clay courts in Pembroke Pines and were homeschooled at night. Like the Williams sisters, they skipped most junior tournaments and played against adults. Her parents decided she would represent Japan, and she turned professional in 2013. In 2018 she won the US Open, beating Serena Williams in the final, becoming the first Japanese player to win a Grand Slam singles title, and she went on to win four Grand Slams.”

Sources: britannica.com womenshistory.org Wikipedia: Naomi Osaka