Fine, but let’s be sensitive!

Fining Naomi Osaka for shirking media duties is a statement, but her withdrawing from the French Open says something else altogether: we need to talk about mental health and media relations

As a writer who has always campaigned for more press interactions, elaborate press releases and greater respect for the media who are (no matter how much some practitioners of sport don’t want to admit it) vehicles of information to fans, the first stage of the Naomi Osaka controversy amused me as much as the second part saddened me.

Osaka, I thought, deserved being fined $15,000 for her refusal to address the media after her first-round win at the French Open on Sunday. I viewed it at face value — yet another sportsperson who believed that the media is a devilish curse that must be avoided.

It’s when she decided not to continue playing the French Open that I felt sympathetic towards her. Here is someone who, like most, started playing sport for the love of it and now she is telling the world that she’d rather deprive herself of that pleasure than face the media.

As Monday wore on, I started to see an Osaka with deep scars and wondered whether there was a better way to handle this problem. Offer no comments to anything probing at the press conference, I thought. I remembered how some of my senior colleagues in the profession headed to Mumbai airport in the 1980s to interview Kapil Dev on one of the Indian cricket team’s arrivals from a tournament in Sharjah. All they got from the then India captain was “no comment” to all their questions.

How about a statement from her before and after every match on five topics, which would be touched upon in a normal scenario, I pondered.

Sure, it won’t be fair to the other players if this is granted but there has to be some consideration for mental health issues. It’s something that the ATP and WTA should be concerned about.

Over the years, there have been tennis players who struggled with media briefings or were graceful at them. Rohit Brijnath, the formidable Singapore-based writer of the Straits Times, recalled to me how impressively Romania’s Simona Halep handled her post-match duties at the press conference following her third Grand Slam final loss to Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in the 2018 Australian Open.

The first question by a reporter was as follows: “We understand it’s difficult for you to come here after this defeat, but we would like to know how you feel, if it’s really depressing, frustrating, or you can still smile?”

Halep replied: “I can still smile. It’s fine. I cried, but now I’m smiling. It’s just a tennis match in the end. But, yeah, I’m really sad I couldn’t win it. I was close again, but the gas was over in the end. She [Wozniacki] was better, she was fresher.”

Brijnath, who has covered roughly 25 Grand Slam events since his Sportsworld magazine days in 1987, found the Halep interaction profound. He told me: “For me, it was many things. It showed her pain, her honesty, her perspective, her class.”

Hemal Ashar, this newspaper’s News Features Editor, who covered Wimbledon in 1994 and 1996, recalled one conference involving Martina Navratilova: “ ‘Martina, KD Lang has been spotted in the spectator stands while you played,’ Navratilova was asked. Lang, pop and country Grammy-winning singer is gay. The question about Lang could have been innocent or it may have had an implication but Navratilova fixed the journalist with a deadpan stare and said, ‘Sooooo? A friend cannot come and see you play a match?’ The silence broken by a few, very few laughs.”

Talking about Navratilova, in her book, Being Myself, she admitted to missing just one press conference in her career and was not going to escape one after she was beaten by Pam Shriver in the quarter-finals of the 1982 US Open. She answered all that was thrown at her, including a question on how she felt about losing $500,000 in the PlayTex Challenge (awarded to those players who win the US Pro Indoors, Family Circle Cup, Wimbledon and US Open). “I can buy a lot of bras without the Playtex money,” she shot back. It was at this press conference that Navratilova, trying hard not to project it as an excuse for her loss to Shriver, revealed that she was suffering from toxoplasmosis (according to Wikipedia, “infection usually occurs by eating undercooked contaminated meat, exposure from infected cat faeces or mother-to-child transmission during pregnancy.”).

The media went to town, saying that the tennis star was suffering from a cat virus when a hamburger could well have caused it. Navratilova had to be coaxed into telling the world about her condition in that press conference by a friend, but some players don’t have the luxury of counsel and sometimes they are too young to say the right things. Her friend and great rival Chris Evert had to face the media at 16 during her debut US Open in 1971. In Chrissie, she wrote: “I was out there alone and didn’t want to speak up and regret sounding foolish. Once you are quoted in the newspapers, on radio or television, there’s no way you can take back those words.”

Osaka is out of the French Open but her decision to quit the competition could well have opened a new chapter in media relations in her sport. Doubtless, there will be reviews, debates and the odd comment thrown in by tournament sponsors, as Osaka attempts to put her sporting life in order. While doing so, she ought to remember her problem is not unique — although her actions are.

mid-day’s group sports editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance. He tweets @ClaytonMurzello
Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.

"Exciting news! Mid-day is now on WhatsApp Channels Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!