Emma Raducanu has said that she is “not too concerned” about forthcoming tournaments, because her long-term development as a player is her priority this year. Raducanu is to play Rebeka Masarova on Thursday in Indian Wells, where she registered her best result of last season by reaching the fourth round. Were she to lose, she would drop 110 of her 191 rankings points and thus fall back to outside the world’s top 330.
But in an interview with the BBC, Raducanu said that results were not her priority this season. “I want to work on becoming a better tennis player,” she said. “I think for me I’m not too concerned about this year’s tournaments. “A lot of people out there would say that I need matches, but I think that for me I want to work on my game and development. Taking time to do that is very necessary and not just following the crowd, or playing a lot of matches, or dropping down [to Challenger level] to do that. I want to work on developing skills.”
Masarova should, in theory, be a manageable opponent. Ranked No 96, she has won only one regular tour match this season, as against Raducanu’s three, although she did beat British No 4 Heather Watson on Sunday in the Indian Wells qualifying event. Raducanu has been acclimatising in Indian Wells for a few days, having spent the best part of three weeks in the UK, so she should avoid some of the issues she experienced in Doha after making a late arrival at the Khalifa International Tennis Complex.
She found herself subject of criticism for her scheduling during the Middle East tournaments, but hit back on Wednesday and insisted she does not anticipate making any changes to her event preparations. “Not at all actually,” she said in Indian Wells. “I think that I trained [with] three hours of tennis, an hour and a half in the gym and had two hours off in the evening. But I don’t know, you should tell me what I should do in my off time from 8pm till 10pm.” “It’s basically like training in Dubai and then having a nice dinner with a lot of people,” she added. “The only difference is my dinners go public.”
After her 6-0, 7-6 defeat by Anhelina Kalinina in the first round of that event, Raducanu said: “I think I need to practice training outside a bit more because it’s very different and also the light, conditions, shadows – it’s really hard to kind of see the ball, I found towards the end.” However, as we move into the third month of her comeback from last year’s wrist and ankle surgery, Raducanu’s training schedule has thus far been based exclusively on the indoor courts at the National Tennis Centre in south-west London.
“It’s just a bit of a journey for me, I would say, you don’t really know what to expect after being out for eight months,” she told the BBC on Tuesday. “Because I was so go-go-go since December, I felt like I became a little fatigued, so it was good to go back, freshen up and practise for the American swing, which I’m a big fan of.” Raducanu suggested that she would be available for Great Britain’s forthcoming Billie Jean King Cup qualifying tie in France on the weekend of April 12-13.
“I don’t know if I’ll get the call-up,” she said, referring to the decision that BJK Cup captain Anne Keothavong will have to make. “But if she asks me to, I think it makes sense because it’s before Stuttgart on indoor clay.”
Roddick: ‘Raducanu has not played enough matches’
The Porsche Open in Stuttgart – also played on indoor clay – starts immediately after the tie in France, and is one of Raducanu’s scheduled stops. Porsche is among her eight blue-chip sponsors.
Meanwhile, Andy Roddick, the former world No 1, has questioned Raducanu’s scheduling. “She has to work her way back,” Roddick said on his new podcast, Served. “She has not played enough matches. She needs matches anywhere – I don’t care if it’s in a parking lot for a dollar.
“You cannot create those pressure situations in practice. This spacing is odd to me: only playing 1000s and slams on the way back. If I was her coach, I would say, ‘Indian Wells, we’ll see how it goes, but if not then we’re going to get three Challengers [second-tier events] in instead of playing Miami’.”
Roddick added, tongue in cheek, that he would probably get fired for making this suggestion. Raducanu did at least suggest that two changes have helped her feel more comfortable, in revamping her team for 2024 and having her parents, mother Renee and father Ian, join her on the road. “I put some good people in place around me. I basically had a new team completely: new agent [Thomas Houchin], new coach [Nick Cavaday] and new fitness [team],” she said.
“I went back in-house with the LTA in terms of the gym and that was great. They’ve been a great help over that rehabilitation period and I think having good people around is the most important thing.
“I think it’s just nice for them [her parents] to enjoy the fruits of their sacrifices. My parents were both working a 9-5 job but it was more like a 9-9 job. My mum would work into the early hours sometimes, so I think it’s just nice for both of them to be able to enjoy some of the success that’s happened because of their investment and their work. I’m just very happy I can help provide that.”
