British tennis star Emma Raducanu admits her rapid rise in the sport has come with its drawbacks as she continues her recovery from wrist and ankle surgery.
Raducanu rose to prominence at the 2020 US Open where she became the first qualifier in history to win a Grand Slam title. At Flushing Meadows, she won nine matches in a row without dropping a set. Among the players she defeated were Belinda Bencic, Maria Sakkari and then Leylah Fernandez in the final. At the time it was only the second time in her career that she had played in the main draw of a major tournament.
However, since then the Brit has encountered numerous battles both on and off the court. Injury setbacks alongside multiple changes of coaches had prevented Raducanu from establishing any consistency on the Tour. Since her US Open triumph, she is yet to reach another tournament final and has only featured in the semi-finals of a WTA event once which was at the Seoul Open last September where she retired from her match injured.
“I’ve had a lot of setbacks, one after the other. I am resilient, my tolerance is high, but it’s not easy. And sometimes I think to myself I wish I’d never won the US Open, I wish that didn’t happen,’’ Raducanu told The Sunday Times. “Then I am like, remember that feeling, remember that promise, because it was completely pure.”
“When I started playing (in the US Open final) … People talk about flow. I have only experienced that twice in my life and that was one of them. I was so in the moment it was insane. I wasn’t even thinking, my body was just moving.”
After her surprise New York win, Raducanu found herself in the limelight with a surge of companies wanting to collaborate with her. According to Forbes, she was the fourth highest-paid female athlete of 2022 with estimated earnings of $18.7M. Only freestyle skier Eileen Gu, Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka had earned more.
Among the deals she struck were with companies such as Dior, Evian and Porsche. However, it wasn’t all perfect for Raducanu who says there are ‘sharks’ in the industry who saw her as nothing else but a piggy bank for them.
“I had to mature very quickly. When I won I was extremely naive. What I have realised in the past two years, the tour and everything that comes with it, it’s not a very nice, trusting and safe space,” she reflects. “You have to be on guard because there are a lot of sharks out there. I think people in the industry, especially with me because I was 19, now 20, they see me as a piggy bank. It has been difficult to navigate. I have been burnt a few times. I have learnt, keep your circle as small as possible.”
It is unclear as to when Raducanu will return to the Tour following her three minor surgeries which were conducted on both of her wrists, as well as one ankle. She believes her wrist problem was exacerbated by overworking and her reluctance to stop training out of fear of being seen as ‘weak.’ Describing the demands of Tour life as ‘brutal,’ she also struggled with her mental health and coping with pressure.
“I was under so much pressure to perform, people had no idea what was going on and I had to have this façade, to keep everything inside,” she said. “It has been really hard. And then to be scrutinised for it when they don’t know what is going on. I am very young and still learning and making mistakes. It is a lot harder when you are making mistakes in front of everyone and everyone has something to say about it.”
Raducanu is currently ranked 128th in the world.
