Emma Raducanu withdraws from French Open qualifying
Emma Raducanu will miss the French Open - Getty Images/Clive Brunskill
Emma Raducanu has withdrawn from next week’s French Open qualifying event, in a decision which seems to be strategic rather than linked to any injury.
Those training at the National Tennis Centre in recent days have reported that Raducanu has been hitting on hard courts, both indoors and outdoors, rather than the red clay.
In the absence of any explanation from her management team, we can only presume that she intends to put in a long grass-court training block ahead of the English summer – Wimbledon’s grass courts are due to open next week.
Yet this approach was questioned last month by Raducanu’s own Billie Jean King Cup captain Anne Keothavong.
When asked whether Raducanu should go to Paris for the French Open qualifying event or spend longer working on grass, Keothavong replied “It’s a number of weeks between now and the first grass-court event. That’s a long training block and she’s already had eight months off on the sidelines.”
In the same interview on Sky Sports, Keothavong said that she had been disappointed by Raducanu’s talk of being exhausted after she was thrashed in the first round of Madrid by the little-known Argentine María Lourdes Carlé.
In her assessment of that match on April 24 – which remains the last time we saw Raducanu in action – Keothavong said “We talk a lot about head, heart and legs, and if your head and your heart aren’t in it, your legs don’t stand a chance. It was really disappointing to see. She said she was tired, but do you talk yourself into more tiredness?”
In early April, Raducanu had shown some encouraging form at the Billie Jean King Cup tie in Le Portel, carrying Great Britain to a surprise victory over France with back-to-back victories over Caroline Garcia and Diane Parry.
She then played well on the indoor clay of Stuttgart, taking world No 1 Iga Swiatek to a tie-break. But since the Carlé match she has been absent from the match court for almost a month, and now seems likely to spend another fortnight waiting for the grass season to begin.
It remains to be seen how many tournaments Raducanu will enter in the UK, but the first available match play would be at the second-tier event in Surbiton which starts on June 2.
By declining to play at Roland Garros, Raducanu forfeits the chance to improve a ranking which remains stranded at No 212. The complicated rules of the WTA Tour also state that it will leave her with an automatic zero in one of her 18 tournament fields - a possible handicap later in the year.
In an interview this weekend, Raducanu made waves by saying that female tennis players are often more skilful than male ones, before going on to describe the pay gap between the sexes as “huge” and unfair.
She also said that “Life starts after tennis. I am actually looking forward to the next chapter, which is funny to say at this age, but there are so many things I want to do in this life and I just don’t have enough time.”
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