First photos of Naomi Osaka practicing with new coach Jermaine Jenkins

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Two and a half weeks after her abrupt split with coach Sascha Bajin, who led her to two consecutive Grand Slam titles and No.1 ranking, Naomi Osaka hired Jermaine Jenkins as her new head coach and thanks to Jimmie48 we have photos of their practice session ahead of their first tournament together, the 2019 BNP Paribas Open.

The 34-year-old Jermaine was Venus Williams’ hitting partner from 2015 until the end of last season, while his younger brother Jarmere is currently in Serena Williams’ team. In case you didn’t know, Jarmaine changed the destiny of his brother Jarmere — in September 2017, while still looking for professional happiness, shifting between tennis and investment sales consultancy, Jarmere got a phone call from his brother, inviting him to work with Serena. Now Jarmere is the tennis legend’s employee, hitting partner, gym buddy, “Mafia” opponent, friend, and more.

As you can see, Osaka was all smiles with her new coach and we all know that good mood is important to her. The Japanese also looked cool in her Adidas practice duds: the Spring Parley Practice Tank and Spring Club Short.

4 COMMENTS

  1. Naomi Osaka: The Haitian-Japanese, not the Japanese. And further more, why refer to her by her race (1/2 of it anyway) in an article about her new coach? Just sounds off, weird, and uncalled for. Congrats, Naomi and Jermaine! Go get ’em!

  2. The Real Deal, in pretty much all my articles I mention a country that a player plays for, it is informative. Naomi plays for Japan and that is a fact. If we looked at the background of players, we could question the “official” nationality of at least half of WTA players.

  3. Okay. Nonetheless, Japanese is not a country, but Japan is. Japanese is a nationality or ethnicity; hence, Naomi’s ethnicity/nationality is Haitian-Japanese, no question about it. Moreover, the article was not about what country she plays for but her new coach. “The new world #1 champ” would’ve been more suitable (or something along those lines) and a better choice of words to describe who she is in the world of tennis. Thanks for the reply.

  4. The Real Deal, I didn’t say that Japanese is a country, but that Naomi is Japanese. She was born in Japan and plays for Japan. In all reputable media outlets, sports journalists often refer to players by their nationality.

    Andrea Petkovic is officially considered German, as she plays for Germany, even though she was born in Yugoslavia (currently the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina), and none of her parents are German. There are dozens of similar examples in the tennis world.

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