Naomi Osaka has reached the final of the Bad Homburg Open, the first grass-court final of her career. She defeated Wang Xinyu 6-3, 6-3 in the semis on Friday to advance to the championship game on Saturday, finishing a week in Germany that she said surprised her. After the win, she was asked about her daughter, Shai, who is almost three years old and waiting for her mother in London. What ensued was one of the more whimsical moments of the grass-court swing and on-court interviews. 

“She’s in London right now, so that’s good. She watched it maybe. She’s waiting for me in Wimbledon, but I don’t know if she knows that I’m successful. I think she just knows that I play tennis,” Osaka said. 

The observation came with the self-awareness that only a parent operating at the highest level of professional sport can really articulate. The child is familiar with the bag. She is familiar with the activity, but not with everything else.

“Sometimes when we’re at home and I pick up my tennis bag, she’s like, ‘Oh, are you going to tennis?’ I don’t know if she really likes it, but she knows what I do. She probably just doesn’t know how good I am at it, or not,” Osaka continued.

Osaka’s win at Bad Homburg is her top result on grass since adding a semifinal to her record in the 2018 Nottingham Open. She knocked out Ekaterina Alexandrova 6-2, 6-2 in 59 minutes in the quarterfinals, a player who had just beaten Roland Garros champion Mirra Andreeva in the previous round. Interestingly, Osaka won 94.1% of first-serve points and fired seven aces in the match.

After the win, she credited coach Tomas Wiktorowski, who came on board last July, as a key reason for her comfort on the surface.

“Obviously I can’t say that I’ve had much experience on grass, but I feel really good right now.” 

The Japanese pro has got 23 aces in her four matches, and has won 79% of her first-serve points, while not having dropped a single set during the tournament. The victory over Alexandrova was notably her 49th career win against a top-20 opponent, and her first on grass, a distinction that says everything about how long this surface has resisted her. Grass has always been the least preferred surface for a player who made her career on hard courts. Now she has slowly adjusted to playing on clay and grass. Bad Homburg, with Wimbledon three days away, has opened that frontier in the best possible way. 

Shai was born in July 2023, and her name means “gift” in Arabic, a choice Osaka made deliberately. Shai first appeared at a professional tennis tournament at the 2025 US Open, where she cheered her mother on from the stands. After her return, Osaka has made it clear her daughter is not a hindrance to her tennis career but the reason she’s rebuilding.

“My return to the sport is a love letter for moms,” she said in the trailer for her documentary, Naomi Osaka: The Second Set. The Bad Homburg final, reached the week before Wimbledon with Shai waiting in London, is the most eloquent installment of that letter yet.

Osaka eyes history at Wimbledon after career-best grass run

Naomi Osaka’s opponent in the Bad Homburg final is fourth-seeded Karolina Muchova. The Czech defeated Romanian player Elena Ruse in the semifinals, 6-4, 6-4, to set up the showpiece match. She is 28-8 on the season and 4-1 on grass and poses a true test for the four-time Grand Slam champion. The final itself is not the only thing Osaka will get out of it; she’ll get more match time on grass at the right time of year.

Osaka has reached the third round at Wimbledon thrice: 2017, 2018, and 2025. Her game of heavy serves and clean, flat groundstrokes should be more dangerous on grass than her results have indicated over the years. Bad Homburg is the first time she has answered it in kind. After beating Alexandrova, when Osaka was asked about her relationship with the surface, she was honest. 

“When I was younger, my first grass season, I injured myself. I slipped, and it kind of scared me a lot from moving on grass. My relationship with grass, I’m learning to love it a little bit, like clay.”  

The injury was not just physical. It created a hesitancy in her movement that took years to untangle. The Bad Homburg week, as it has progressed, has become a classic example of the unraveling process and is now fully in motion. 

Shai, who is waiting in London, is probably only aware that her mom plays tennis. By Saturday evening, she may know how good her mom really is.