Two days after leading the sport of tennis into a social justice work stoppage, Naomi Osaka won a semifinal match on Friday in the Western & Southern Open. She had
Osaka beat Elise Mertens of Belgium after walking to the court in a black T-shirt with a picture of a clenched fist and the words “Black Lives Matter” displayed across the front.
Osaka had won a hard-fought, three-set quarterfinal Wednesday afternoon. About five hours later, she announced that she would not play her semifinal, initially scheduled for Thursday, to draw attention to the issue of police violence against Black people.
Osaka’s announcement accelerated discussions that tennis officials had been having Wednesday evening about how tennis needed to react to the sudden halt in sports following the shooting of Jacob Blake, said Chris Widmaier, the chief spokesman for the United States Tennis Association. U.S.T.A. officials and organizers of the Western & Southern Open had not decided on a course of action until Osaka announced her willingness to withdraw.
Two hours later, tennis officials suspended play, in part to ease the onus of taking a stand from a single player. “In my mind that brings more attention to the movement,” Osaka said.
Reporting was contributed by Alan Blinder, Gillian R. Brassil, Michael Cooper, Sopan Deb, John Eligon, Jacey Fortin, Matthew Futterman, Ruth Graham, Aishvarya Kavi, Tyler Kepner, Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio, Sarah Mervosh, Richard Perez-Peña, Bryan Pietsch, Ed Shanahan, Marc Stein, Michael Wines, Neil Vigdor and Alan Yuhas.