A premise that needs adjusting
None of the four Grand Slam tournaments is held in Asia. Wimbledon and the French Open are in Europe, the US Open is in North America, and the Australian Open is in Oceania. So there has never been a Grand Slam event on the Asian continent, and a “first woman to win a major in Asia” in the strict sense does not exist. Nothing of the kind happened in 1967 either: that year Billie Jean King won at Wimbledon and the US Championships, and Asian players were rare in the draws.
The question that does have an answer is a related one: who was the first woman from Asia to win a Grand Slam singles title, wherever it was played? That is Li Na of China.
Li Na
Li Na was born in Wuhan in 1982 and came up through China’s state sports system. When she was growing up, tennis had little place in Chinese life. Chinese sport had been heavily disrupted during the Cultural Revolution, and professional tennis only slowly returned to the country in the decades afterwards.
She won her first major title at the 2011 French Open, beating Italy’s Francesca Schiavone in the final on the Roland Garros clay. It is generally recorded as the first Grand Slam singles title won by a player from Asia, in either the women’s or men’s game. She reached the Australian Open final in 2011 and again in 2013 without winning, then took the title in 2014, defeating Slovakia’s Dominika Cibulkova in the final.
Her influence went beyond the results. Matches in China drew very large television audiences, and the sport’s governing bodies and sponsors increased their investment in China in the years that followed. She retired in 2014, and was later inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
Naomi Osaka
Naomi Osaka was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1997 and moved to the United States as a young child, but she plays under the Japanese flag. She won the 2018 US Open, beating Serena Williams in a final that was overshadowed by an argument over umpiring. She followed it with the 2019 Australian Open, a title that took her to the top of the world rankings. She added the 2020 US Open and the 2021 Australian Open, giving her four major singles titles.
She is the first player from Asia to reach the world number one ranking in singles, which is a different record from Li Na’s: Li Na won major titles first, but Osaka reached the top spot.
Others from the region
Asian women had been reaching the late rounds of the majors before these two. Japan’s Kimiko Date reached semi-finals at Grand Slam events in the 1990s, and she returned to the tour after a long retirement. India’s Sania Mirza won major titles in women’s doubles and mixed doubles, though not singles.
More recently, China’s Zheng Qinwen reached the 2024 Australian Open final and, later that year, won the Olympic singles gold medal at the Paris Games, which is a separate event from the Grand Slams.
Why the continent matters now
The tour has come to the region even though the majors have not. Tournaments in China, Japan and elsewhere in Asia form a significant part of the women’s calendar each autumn, and Asian players fill much more of the rankings than they did half a century ago.
None of this was visible in 1967. At the time, the story of women’s tennis centred on Europe, North America and Australia, and an Asian champion at the majors was unimaginable to most observers. The distance between that year and Li Na’s first title in 2011 is an indication of how slowly the sport’s centre of gravity moved.