FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ On the last tennis court on the right, before the apartment building where they lived, the big dream started small for Naomi Osaka and her family.
"That was their court," says Bill Adams, the tennis pro at Lakeshore Tennis Park in Miramar and Osaka's first coach in South Florida. "They'd be there five, six hours a day. Every day."
Osaka's father, Leonard Francois, first approached Adams in 2006 with his two, young daughters and the question he would ask coaches across South Florida for the next decade:
"Can you look at my girls?"
Mari was 11 then, Naomi, 9.
"Let's have a look," Adams said.
Thus began one of the more remarkable stories in sports, one that years later has overtaken the tennis world, heralded an international sports star and returns three miles from the Lakeshore court it started this week with the Miami Open at Hard Rock Stadium.
Along the way: Osaka, now 21, navigated South Florida's youth tennis scene and rose to No. 1 in the world. The family that couldn't even afford a dining table in their small apartment now chooses between multi-million-dollar endorsement offers. The dream that began on that common, public court adorns covers from Time to ESPN The Magazine and television shows from "Ellen" to Japan's "WOWOW."
Yet what is an amazing story in the world of tennis, and should be the happiest of endings for everyone, is decidedly less so for some of a carousel of South Florida coaches who worked with Osaka back when the future was a fog of dreams.
None of the half-dozen coaches who trained and helped develop the Osaka sisters in South Florida were paid for their work. The family, they all knew, had no money. The mother worked an office job simply to house them and pay the bills.
Some coaches, like Adams and Harold Solomon, remain fine with that arrangement, even if Solomon's training ended with the daughters abruptly not showing up one day, never to return.
Another coach, Patrick Tauma, expresses disappointment at training the daughters for free for a year and then feeling "manipulated" by the father over the way it ended.
Another coach, Christophe Jean, was more than disappointed that his two years of coaching the daughters with no pay remains unrewarded. He filed a lawsuit in February over a contract signed by Francois, whom everyone calls Max, in 2012, granting the coach 20 percent of the uncertain future earnings from the daughters.
"I didn't want to do this, but the last time I talked with Max he told me to go get a lawyer," Jean said. "So I got a lawyer."
Osaka's public-relations agent at IMG Tennis, Mary Jane Orman, refused to make the father or daughter available for a South Florida Sun Sentinel interview unless no mention of the lawsuit appeared in this article.
Whether the lawsuit has merit, as Jean's lawyer says, or is a trapping of sudden fame, as the Osaka family's lawyer framed it, their relationship underscores the unconventional path the family took to the top of the tennis mountain.
Indeed, with no money, no tennis background and against brutally long odds _ "infinitesimal," Solomon called them _ Francois's hope for his daughters was based on one successful model. Richard Williams took his daughters, Venus and Serena, from poverty to tennis greatness, too.
That was Francois' blueprint, these South Florida coaches soon learned. Just as the Williams family moved to South Florida for his daughters' tennis, Francois moved from New York with his wife, Tamaki Osaka, and their daughters.
That completed the family's world-wide journey. Francois was a college student when he met Tamaki in her native Japan, where their daughters were born. In 2000, they moved to New York, where his Haitian family lived. By 2006, it was on to South Florida to live his tennis dream.
Florida has long been a tennis biosphere for the young and hopeful. The warm weather. The readily available hard and clay courts. The indoor and outdoor venues. The gateway to continents, making it geographically convenient for both teachers and students.
Combined with the advent of home-schooling, as many as 50 tennis academies sprouted in Broward and Palm Beach counties over the past couple of decades, each offering the seductive dream of tennis success to those with talent and, often, money. The estimated price tag to train a player: $40,000 a year, these coaches agree.
That price was beyond Francois' means. Adams knew that without asking in that first meeting at C.B. Smith Park. But Adams, in retrospect, figures Francois did his homework. In New York he probably heard of Adams, who was a disciple of famed New York tennis coach Harry Hopman.
Adams also coached the developing Williams sisters for a while in Delray Beach. What better way to follow the blueprint than have a coach who was part of it right down to the scant money?
"I don't run a non-profit program," Adams said. "But sometimes you see someone, see their passion, and if you see they don't have money you find a way to make it work."
In this manner, he was like all the coaches who met the Osaka sisters over the next decade. A bargain was struck between Adams and Francois. The father would do fundamental tasks like pitching tennis balls to students taking group lessons in exchange for Adams' work with his daughters.
They worked, too. Three hours in the morning. Another hour or two in the afternoon. Six days a week. Adams even gave them a key to their preferred court they were such constants.
Mari, older and stronger, was the better player, then and for years to come. Naomi?
"I wasn't even sure she liked tennis at times," Adams said. "Her becoming No. 1 in the world was the farthest thing from my mind."
One moment changed that thought. In a two-person relay drill, he saw Osaka sprint hard for the first time. Adams has coached for 46 years, and besides the Williams sisters, he worked with Mary Pierce and other top pros.
"I've never seen a player move like that," he remembered in his small office at the Lakeshore courts. "Everyone was thinking Mari was going to be the better player at that time. I said, 'Max, this is this is the one (Naomi) that can be a really good player.' "
For their first year in South Florida, Adams worked with them. And then, as is part of most tennis stories, change came. The family moved on one day. Adams was fine with it, and still stays in touch with Francois.
"He came to my house two weeks ago," said Adams, 69. They discussed a school Francois is developing in Haiti. "I'm happy for their success."
