Celebrating and Supporting Black Tennis Champions
Four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka is both Black and Japanese, and she has spoken publicly about how her heritage has influenced the racism she has endured from both American audiences and fellow players in Japan. Now 24 years old, Osaka found fame as the winner of the 2018 British Open, a career-defining moment when she beat the formidable Serena Williams. Since then, Osaka has become a role model for many young female and young Black athletes for her outspoken activism, and for her sharing of her inner struggles amidst an avalanche of criticism.
A participant in Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, Osaka has insisted on her right to speak up publicly on important issues. “This is a human rights issue,” she told The Guardian newspaper in August 2020. Sports Illustrated named her a 2020 Sportsperson of the Year for her activism, alongside LeBron James and other high-profile athlete-activists.
Osaka has also notably insisted on her own right, amid controversy, to take the time she needed to cope emotionally with the often-crushing burden of celebrity.
Mattel, Inc., has released a Barbie doll replica of Osaka in its “Role Model” series, a pop-culture testament to her name recognition as a powerful spokesperson for everyone’s right to dignity and self-determination.
Serena Williams - a powerhouse player and speaker
Osaka is one of the most recent in a long line of Black tennis players who have fought for justice on and off the court. There is also, of course, Serena Williams, winner of 23 Grand Slam titles, more than any other woman—or man—in the history of the Open era. Williams has stood up for the right of female tennis players to be paid at the same level as men, and she has additionally made numerous personal investments into businesses headed by Black women.
Like Osaka, Williams is also redrawing the boundaries on what is an acceptable level of vulnerability for a public figure to show in public. Thanks to both Williams and Osaka, audiences have come to realize that expressing powerful emotions, and insisting on the need for self-care, can be highly positive and healthy actions for people of all genders and backgrounds.
Williams notably displayed what psychologists have noted as a deep level of emotional intelligence in her controversial loss to Osaka at the 2018 U.S. Open. When Williams’ fans booed Osaka, Williams stepped up to the mic, let them know she was disappointed, too, and called on them to show respect to Osaka for her first Grand Slam win. She then put her arm protectively around Osaka, and the crowd not only stopped booing, they cheered. That took character.
Arthur Ashe – a pioneer of tenacity
No discussion of great Black tennis champions would be complete without Arthur Ashe, the first-ever (and, to date, only) Black player to win titles in the men’s division at both the U.S. Open and Wimbledon. He also became the first Black male tennis player to achieve a No. 1 worldwide ranking, and the first inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
When Ashe beat Jimmy Connors at Wimbledon in 1975, his victory shocked the world of tennis—already rocked by his 1968 win at the U.S. Open—and sealed the deal on his fame.
Ashe leveraged his fame as a Black player in a mostly white sport by reaching back to help those who would come after him. He became a driving force in the creation of tennis programs that would benefit underserved youth of color and an outspoken voice against the South African system of apartheid. His fight for the cause of justice was so great that he pushed to obtain a visa that would allow him to play in the South African Open. After receiving a denial in 1969, he was successful in 1973, two decades before the fall of apartheid. And his multi-volume book A Hard Road to Glory continues to serve as a major source on the lives and accomplishments of Black athletes in multiple sports.
Before his death from AIDS—due to a tainted blood transfusion—at age 49 in 1993, Ashe worked to raise public awareness about the disease at a time when doing so often was a stigma in itself.
The infrastructure of access
Tennis is filled with many other African American greats, including Althea Gibson. In 1951, Gibson became the first Black player to compete at Wimbledon, and she went on to win at Wimbledon, in both singles and doubles play, in 1957. She won the U.S. Open the following year.
Another top African American player is Venus Williams, whose talent rivals her sister’s. She has won multiple Grand Slam titles, in both singles and doubles play, including Wimbledon doubles wins when paired with Serena in 2012 and 2016.
There are currently a number of other fine African-American players in the sport, but tennis shares a major problem with golf and other traditionally “country club” sports: The financial barriers to entry are steep. Thus, while these sports see an underrepresentation of African Americans (less than 7 percent of professional tennis players are Black), white players are overrepresented (more than 80 percent of professional tennis players are white).
And, in order to achieve their full athletic potential, youth who commit to a game like tennis require extensive professional coaching. The many municipal and other programs targeting youth from underrepresented backgrounds are certainly useful, but often fall behind in terms of the quality of their facilities and access to sufficient equipment.
While we justly celebrate the accomplishments of Black tennis champions, then and now, and acknowledge the barriers they had to overcome, the fact that those barriers were there to begin with is the central issue. Expanding access is one of the key challenges for anyone interested in the future of Black youth in the sport of tennis.