US Open champion Emma Raducanu faces an uphill battle

Emma Raducanu has moved on quickly from a defeat last week after returning to the practice courts in Melbourne over the past few days.

A bout of Covid-19 has disrupted Emma Raducanu’s Australian Open preparations

For those who are understandably concerned after the 6-0, 6-1 thrashing that Emma Raducanu received at the hands of Elena Rybakina, the big-hitting world No.13, in Sydney last week, the good news is that she has moved on quickly after returning to the practice courts in Melbourne over the past few days.

“I’m actually feeling like there’s progress,” the US Open champion said. “All I want to see is that I’m getting slightly better and I have a better feeling. Gradually I’m getting there.”

The bad news is that time is not on her side. Raducanu, 19, revealed on Saturday the scale of the disruption to her pre-season preparations after testing positive for Covid-19 in Abu Dhabi last month, and it does not bode well for her chances of going deep over the next fortnight. Ten days were spent isolating in a hotel room, with regular lie-ins until 1pm to help to pass the time, and it was another 10 days before she felt ready physically to return to a tennis court.

“It was tough to isolate and not be able to move and play for that long,” Raducanu said. “Physically you do lose a little bit of fitness doing that.

“It’s a challenge to try to find the balance of wanting to get out there and practise so much straight after coming out of isolation, but if you do it (for) hours after not doing anything for 20 days, you always start picking up small niggles.

“The performance in Sydney (which lasted 55 minutes) was definitely (down to) a lack of practice. I played maybe six, seven hours (of practice in the build-up), really not many at all. I wasn’t tested physically in that match, the points were over so fast.”

To her credit, Raducanu accepts that life on the tour is not going to be without its ups and downs, and that the best-laid plans can often go awry. Towards the end of last year she talked up the importance of making physical improvements during a carefully planned pre-season training block of four weeks under her new coach, Torben Beltz, and all seemed well in November when she posted photographs from the gym on social media.

“I started and did 10 days of pre-season, which was very, very good,” Raducanu said. “I was feeling like I was making a bit of progress, and then it was a bit frustrating and a bit of a blow for (a positive Covid test) to happen at that time. But at the end of the day I had to see it as a bit of misfortune for all the great luck I had in 2021. I know that it was not all luck, because I created some of it with my tennis, but for sure there were elements of it.”

Luck was certainly not on Raducanu’s side when the draw was made on Thursday. While she has a seeding of No.17 here, the computer pitted her against another grand-slam champion first up on Tuesday. Sloane Stephens, who triumphed at Flushing Meadows in 2017, is unseeded after struggling for consistency in the past 18 months, but she can still prove a formidable opponent on her day.

With the former world No 1 Simona Halep a potential hurdle in the third round, it would, quite frankly, be a triumph if Raducanu reached the second week. While there is a high level of expectation among her many fans as she sets out on her first full season on the WTA tour, it is not presently shared by the player herself. “I feel that, because of the last few months I’ve had, I haven’t played and trained as much as I would have liked to,” Raducanu said. “I feel like there’s actually no pressure on me. I’m just happy to be here and have a swing. I had to jump a few hurdles to play here, so I just want to go out there, have fun and enjoy (playing) on the court.

“The biggest challenge is to be patient. I’m a bit of a perfectionist. Whether that’s practice, whether that’s off the court, I want to be the best I can all the time. Sometimes it’s just not very viable. I need to just relax. As long as the trend is trending upwards, and it is just a matter of small fluctuations, I can be proud.”

Whether Raducanu can shut-out the noise around her remains to be seen. A new television advertisement released through her clothing sponsor, Nike, last week suggests that is one of her main intentions, with the 21-second clip showing the teenager hitting a series of shots while words such as “distracted”, “fluke” and “one-hit wonder” appear on a large screen behind her.

“I loved it because it was very nice of Nike to have my back like that,” Raducanu said. “The Nike ads are pretty iconic, so to be a part of one was a very cool thing. When I saw it I think it reflected me and what I’m feeling right now.”

The Sunday Times