Emma Raducanu says she is ready to step down a level in her search for more match experience, which could mean visiting the second-tier ITF circuit.
Following his three-set defeat to China’s Yafan Wang on Thursday, Raducanu remains stuck inside the world’s top 300; this is too low to qualify directly for WTA events based on her ranking alone.
He has already received a wildcard invitation to the Abu Dhabi Open, which starts on February 5. This raises the question of whether the next two major events in the Middle East, Doha and Dubai, will also be willing to step it up. participated in the raffle.
Otherwise, it’s a modest $40,000 event at the National Tennis Center in Roehampton the week after Abu Dhabi (from 12 February) or a modest $60,000 event at Porto the following week (from 19 February). can play in an event.
The prize money for winning these events will be £3,140 and £4,750 respectively; This will be a drop in the ocean for a woman who was ranked 4th on Forbes’ rich list for female athletes last year, with an estimated income of around £12 million. The US Open victory alone brought in around £1.8 million.
“I really believe that the difference in level between the ‘lower level tournaments’ and these tournaments is not that big,” said Raducanu in Melbourne. “Because you gain so much skill and play in these conditions. The wind here was the best example of this. my rival [Wang] He’s played a lot of ITF and a lot of matches, but the level isn’t actually that different. So yeah, I would play whatever worked with my schedule and the plan.”
After Dubai, the next major tournaments are the American duo of Indian Wells and Miami, known as the Sunshine Double, which covers almost the entire month of March. Raducanu’s protected ranking of No. 103, which he can use in eight more tournaments after his first stint at the Australian Open, should be good enough to earn him a spot in the rankings at those events. But it looks like he wants to get a good run of matches first.
“I would love to race beforehand,” Raducanu said when asked about the Sunshine Double. “Now I’m thinking of coming back, training a little, catching up on some things. Then it depends on the qualification and the wild card situation.”
What about the team around him? His childhood coach, Nick Cavaday, with whom he first worked at the Bromley Tennis Academy when he was six, will continue in his role for the foreseeable future. Raducanu said: “We are getting paid for the work we have done, because it was good to get me from scratch to this level after six weeks.”
The next question is whether he should hire a traveling fitness trainer, especially given the way he’s fading on set decisions. Three of the four matches on this trip to Australia and New Zealand were three-set matches, and in two he was severely weakened by loss of physical conditioning. Even when she beat Elena-Gabriela Ruse in Auckland, she was under pressure from a towering opponent and only managed to save herself by serving to the death.
Raducanu seemed open to the idea. “I worked with a really good coach in London,” he said. “But since he is in the Lawn Tennis Association, I don’t know if he travels a lot. I think it’s a great idea to occasionally travel with a fitness coach during certain weeks. For example, when tournaments are two-week events [which applies to both Indian Wells and Miami]. If you get eliminated early, it’s a great opportunity to do a 10-day mini block. So I think it’s something to look at. But in the near future. “I think we have more time in practice to fix mistakes.”
Mistakes were definitely an issue for Raducanu against Wang. During the third set, he found himself reaching for a towel after contracting what he claimed was some kind of stomach virus. And then there was the forehand error – more like the kind of thing he mentioned above – that caused the airmail to be well over perhaps a dozen balls.
But he still performed well on Thursday night against an opponent who plays a similar style to Raducanu. The experience of returning to 1573 Arena, where he won his first round match last year, was very motivating.
“It’s pretty surreal,” he said of the warm support he’s received from fans, including many British expats. “I really missed that feeling. Wow, I think when I was away and came back, I was really surprised and surprised to see how much support I had. So I was really accepting it, but not like a goodbye. It was more like, ‘I just want to move on and continue to see it all.’ ‘ I said.”