Naomi Osaka’s strong 2025 campaign is ending with a twist.
The four-time Grand Slam champion announced Friday that she is parting ways with Evolve, the agency she founded in 2022 alongside longtime agent Stuart Duguid.
“Hi everyone, writing this to say starting in the new year I’ll be parting ways with Evolve. It’s been a great run and I’m so grateful for all the memories shared,” Osaka wrote in an Instagram post.
The news of Osaka’s departure from Evolve was first reported Thursday by Ben Rothenberg, a tennis journalist who published a biography about the Japanese tennis star in 2024. According to Rothenberg, Osaka is expected to return to IMG, where she partnered with Duguid before they co-founded Evolve.
Osaka’s statement Friday did not indicate her next step.
“When I make my decision on where I’ll go next, you’ll hear it from me,” the 28-year-old wrote.
Duguid and IMG did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Osaka is coming off her second WTA season since missing more than a year of maternity leave. She struggled to reclaim her form in 2024, finishing the year outside the top 50. But she recovered this year, capped off by a semifinals appearance at the US Open and a run to the finals at the Montreal Open to finish 2025 as the No. 16-ranked player.
She is expected to start out 2026 by representing Japan in the United Cup in early January, a few weeks before the Australian Open, the first Grand Slam on the tennis calendar.
Osaka’s departure from Evolve comes less than two weeks before the controversial Battle of the Sexes: The Dubai Showdown between women’s world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka and men’s world no. 673 Nick Kyrgios, who are both represented by Duguid. Evolve is the organizer of the exhibition.
The match is a call back to several historic tennis matches between a man and a woman, most notably in 1973 when Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs. King told BBC Sport last week that she sees little similarities between her event and the modern day version.
“The only similarity is that one is a boy and one is a girl. That’s it. Everything else, no. Ours was about social change; culturally, where we were in 1973. This one is not,” King said.
Ilana Kloss, King’s wife and a former top tennis pro, told Front Office Sports last month that she doesn’t think anyone will take the match between Sabalenka and Kyrgios seriously.
“Other than them getting a check—which is great, I’m sure it’s a big check—I think you can’t even discuss them in the same conversation,” Kloss said.
