The second highest-ranked woman in professional tennis, Naomi Osaka, walked out of the French Open this week after being fined $15,000 for refusing to speak with reporters following a first-round match victory. Osaka said she did it for mental health reasons, but her decision could cost her financially and mentally and, potentially, damage her ranking for failing to do something that is only tangential to her sport. The sports world needs to rethink whether all this commotion over a press availability is worth derailing careers and meddling with athletes' minds.

The news media can be relentless and petty during press conferences. Once, during the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics, U.S. skier Julia Mancuso faced reporters after a gold-medal-winning downhill Giant Slalom run. One reporter insisted on asking her not about her victory but about her underwear.

The constant poking and prying can drive some athletes to the brink and definitely distracts them from the mission at hand: winning. The probing questions have a way of increasing self-doubt, such as whether an athlete has the stuff to keep competing after a shaky performance.

Some athletes bask in the attention. But Osaka clearly isn't one of them. Should she be fined and threatened with future disqualification merely for choosing to maintain focus on her game rather than letting reporters throw her off track?

Osaka announced on social media ahead of the French Open that she was taking a break from media interviews, apparently fully aware that the tournament contractually requires players to attend press conferences. "We're often sat there and asked questions that we've been asked multiple times before or asked questions that bring doubt into our minds and I'm just not going to subject myself to people that doubt me," Osaka wrote.

Those of us in journalism who have done sports reporting understand how grueling it can be — often being forced to write with only minutes until deadline and frantically searching for a usable quote to encapsulate the drama of the competition. That's where color commentary from a participating athlete comes in handy. Sports leagues contractually require interviews as a way of promoting the sport and boosting ratings. Many athletes use the publicity to attract lucrative new sponsorship deals.

But for competitors like Osaka, higher priorities prevail. Neither reporters nor the public benefit when athletes are coerced into sitting before the cameras and providing unenthusiastic, boring answers just to fulfill a contractual obligation.

Other newsmakers, most notably politicians, are notorious for refusing to talk to reporters, yet the journalists covering them still manage to produce quality stories without going into crisis mode. A simple sentence — Osaka declined comment — should have been good enough. Instead, women's tennis now risks derailing one of its brightest shining stars.

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