Real optimism for rejuvenated Emma Raducanu despite early Australian Open exit

A resilient display despite a battle with sickness was further proof that the future looks bright for Raducanu

Heading late into the Melbourne night yesterday, there was an air of familiarity. A medical official was called onto court to treat Emma Raducanu.

This time, though, it wasn’t that her ailing body was falling apart as has been the case for much of the time since her fairytale US Open victory in 2021. Instead, she was treated for nausea, the unfortunate result of a badly timed stomach bug. With that, her Australian Open ambitions were done for another year but rarely has there been more of a sense of optimism from a second-round exit than this.

She has played just 10 matches on the WTA Tour since last year’s Australian Open and won only five of them, two of those coming in the last week alone.

In the interim, she has had an eight-month hiatus from the sport to undergo triple surgery — on both her wrists and her ankle. It led to serious question marks over whether she could get back to the top of her sport. She herself wondered if she would ever pick up a tennis racket again not in pain.

For tennis players, wrist surgery is usually the last resort, given the risks involved, but such were the issues that despite her young age — she is just 21 — it became the only course of action.

Emma Raducanu had surgery on both wrists last year
Emma Raducanu/Twitter

She went from wheelchair to crutches to walking unaided to finally playing tennis come late November. As Raducanu put it following Thursday's 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 defeat to China’s Wang Yafan, she was able to have enough perspective to state, even amid the disappointment, it had been a bonus simply to have made it to Australia in one piece.

There will be far tougher challenges than Wang — the world No 94 — but there were echoes of the Raducanu who first burst onto our screens at Wimbledon and then New York.

In the opening set, she struggled with the windy conditions. So quick a learner is she on court, she had found a way to master them by set two and was quickly setting about dismantling her opponent when sickness struck. While she looked like she was about to vomit between virtually every point — she even went to retch into her towel mid-game in the third set — come the rallies you’d have no idea there was anything wrong.

And perhaps that was the most pleasing aspect, that she showed the resilience to still make it a nail-biting finish which ultimately did not quite end in her favour. She readily admitted the pre-surgery Raducanu might not have been so tough.

“I’ve been in that situation before with matches with illness and injury, and I’ve retired a few times,” she said. “Everything I went through made me so much tougher, there was no way I was going to pull out. She was going to have to beat me and she did.”

The Briton showed resilience as she battled with sickness in the third set
Getty Images

Raducanu has grown accustomed to the barbs. There have been plenty suggesting she was brittle of body and mind, her US Open title simply a lucky one-off. She has made no secret of the fact her rise to become a Grand Slam winner was too meteoric, her body lacking the core strength for the week-in, week-out rigours of the tour. She desperately needed the block of hard training which her trio of operations has afforded.

It was telling that three of her last four matches have gone the distance and, the vomiting episode aside, she has held up well, the wrists in particular. The only setback she said before the Australian Open, pointing to the two visible scars on her wrists, was that her career as a hand model was over.

And that brings us to the other impressive facet of a rejuvenated Raducanu. Before surgery, the once bright spark of post-match interviews had begun to cut a sullen figure. Clearly in pain and peppered with questions, she’d had enough.

The return version of Raducanu has been her old happy-go-lucky self. The smile has been more present, even when talking about the manner of her Australian Open exit, and you’ll be hard pressed to find a more eloquent talker in any sport.

The loss will hurt, not so much her shortcomings but the sense of what might have been had she not been sick.

But one senses that won’t last for long. Barely an hour after the match she was talking about her next training push and her excitement for the rest of 2024. The confidence is back as seen by the occasional swagger after particularly good points against Wang, although maybe not fully restored.

It would be premature to say that the Raducanu renaissance is complete. But she is back and believing, and for all the turmoil deserves all the success that comes her way. She is too good not to make it back to the top again.

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