Sunday at the BNP Paribas Open, Aryna Sabalenka wore a placid smile to her news conference, serenity personified in a baby-pink top after sailing to a third-round victory over Jaqueline Cristian.
A reporter asked her about her next match, and what it might be like to face fellow four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka again. Sabalenka and Osaka have only squared off once before, in the fourth round of the 2018 U.S. Open that Osaka would go on to win.
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Sabalenka’s smile widened. Her eyes floated up and to the left.
“Well,” she said, “It will sure be a fashion show at the beginning. Then a crazy match.”
There was no shade in Sabalenka’s comment about her fellow fashion lover, only truth. The prospect of finally watching another match between two of the most captivating players of the past decade is thrilling — but only partly because of the tennis.
The match is rife with subplots. In a sport constantly thirsting for substantial rivalries, here, in the desert, floats a pairing as tantalizing and unreal as a mirage. It cuts across fashion, sports business and cultural resonance, a showcase of two players who have taken their own paths toward stardom and met their own obstacles along the way.
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As a spectacle, Sabalenka vs. Osaka is as thought-provoking for what it says about tennis fans’ values as it is competitively enticing.
On paper, the bout looks lopsided. Sabalenka is operating at her full power, having followed her 2025 U.S. Open title with a run to the final of the Australian Open this January. She is world No. 1.
Osaka, ranked No. 16, will always be regarded as a serious threat, thanks to her ball-striking and championship resumé. But she came through an uneven third-round match against No. 61 Camila Osorio on Sunday in three sets, and since her most recent return to tennis in 2024, she has a 2-8 record against top-10 players.
Both are spoiling for the fight. For Osaka, playing Sabalenka is exactly the big match she lives for.
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“For me, they’re the most fun,” she said Sunday during an interview with Tennis Channel.
“When I was younger, I used to only show up for big matches like this. This is what I practice for. I’m just really excited to see what I can do.”
For Sabalenka, there is deferred revenge at stake, after Osaka’s dramatic three-set victory nearly eight years ago that sent her to her first Grand Slam quarterfinal. The match was a preview of fireworks to come for both players, taut with suspense and stuffed with winners.
Sabalenka held serve from 0-40 twice in the final set, and then saved three match points in the final game, before ultimately double-faulting on match point.
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“I would like to play her,” Sabalenka said of their coming rematch, with a Cheshire-cat grin.
The win proved a breakthrough moment in Osaka’s career, putting the then-20-year-old on track to win her first Grand Slam. Sabalenka wouldn’t win her first major title until 2023; by then, Osaka had won her fourth.
Since then, their fortunes on the court have reversed, with Sabalenka winning three titles to Osaka’s zero, but the most compelling narrative around Tuesday’s match will be its meaning for tennis’ attention economy.
Osaka, who has remained one of the biggest sports stars in the world even when away from the court, has built her cultural resonance by walking a well-trod path — one available to only the most elite tier of transcendent athletes.
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She established a foundation of partnerships with massive brands, and then broke away from her agency, IMG, to take more creative control. In 2022, she started her own agency, Evolve, with her agent Stuart Duguid. They also founded a production company.
The agency was initially presented as if Osaka had equity as a co-founder, but this was not the case, she said, during an interview with Bounces after she departed Evolve last December to return to IMG. Duguid declined to comment on the split.
The most recent example of Osaka’s cultural world-building in the second act of her career is her tennis fashion. Reaction to her jellyfish-inspired walk-on outfit at the Australian Open, which she designed with Robert Wun, a London-based couturier from Hong Kong, dominated the tournament’s news cycle for days.
At the BNP Paribas Open, she debuted a Nike leopard-print dress with gold ear cuffs, facial jewelry and clawed gloves, designed with Filipino-American designer Chris Habana.
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Sabalenka, who has taken a more grassroots approach to relevance in her climb up the rankings with TikTok dances and courtside bits with her coaches, expressed a half-joking displeasure with her lack of custom kits from Nike at last year’s WTA Tour Finals.
But while Nike designed Osaka’s dress for this tournament, and at the Australian Open, the Wun outfit was an Osaka production, fully funded by her, as reported by Hard Court.
“It’s one of the most fun things I can do,” Osaka said in a news conference of designing her kits.
“It’s a way to express yourself, it’s a story that I want to convey.”
In January 2025, Sabalenka took a similar step to Osaka in search of autonomy, leaving IMG to join Evolve in part, she said, because IMG wasn’t meeting her expectations.
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The Belarusian was frustrated at the disparity between her on-court success — by then she’d won three Grand Slam trophies — and a sponsorship portfolio that lacked the type of opulent brands top tennis players often attract.
In a statement, a spokesperson for IMG described their split as mutual.
A year later, Sabalenka has spent more time in the spotlight thanks to a much publicized, and criticized, “Battle of the Sexes” stunt with fellow Evolve client Nick Kyrgios. On the luxury brand front, Gucci and Emirates Airlines announced her as a brand ambassador in January.
Osaka and Sabalenka serve as reminders that stardom in sports isn’t always about who wins the most; celebrity is a fickle formula. Osaka, the pioneering introvert, is an icon. Sabalenka, the world-beating extrovert, always seems to be striving. The apparent paradox has nothing to do with their brilliant tennis; it has everything to do with those of us watching the show.
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And with Sabalenka’s and Osaka’s resumés, instincts, playing styles and forces of will, it’s irresistible to imagine what might have been had they battled each other more often. Or even more than once. Come Tuesday, tennis fans will imagine no longer.
Osaka well remembers what the match could be.
“I do remember it just because I felt like in that tournament, that was the hardest match for me,” she said.
“And I remember thinking, like, we’re both going to get very far.”
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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