by Emma Raducanu says she is willing to downgrade in search of more match experience, which could include a visit to the ITF second tier circuit.
After losing in three sets to China’s Yafan Wang on Thursday, Raducanu remains stuck just inside the world’s top 300 – comfortably too low to earn her direct entry into WTA events on her ranking alone.
She has already received a wild card invitation to the Abu Dhabi Open, which starts on February 5. From there, the question is whether Doha and Dubai – the next two big events in the Middle East – will want to fast-track it. into the draw.
If not, she could play a modest $40,000 event at the National Tennis Center in Roehampton the week after Abu Dhabi (February 12 onwards), or perhaps $60,000 in Porto the week after (February 19 onwards) .
The prize money for those events is £3,140 and £4,750 respectively – a drop in the ocean for a woman who was ranked No. 4 on the Forbes rich list of female athletes last year, with an estimated income of around £12 million. Her win at the US Open brought her in around £1.8 million.
“I really believe the difference between the level of the quote ‘lower level competitions’ and these competitions is not that big,” Raducanu said in Melbourne. “Because you get so many skills, you’re playing in these conditions. A great example was the wind here. My opponent [Wang] she played a lot of ITF and got a lot of matches under her belt, but the level isn’t really that different. So yeah, I’d play whatever fits my schedule, whatever fits the plan.”
After Dubai, the next major tournaments are the American duo of Indian Wells and Miami, known as the Sunshine Double, which occupies almost the entire month of March. Raducanu’s defensive ranking should be No. 103, which she can use in eight more tournaments after her debut here at the Australian Open, should be good enough to earn her a place to qualify at those events. But it looks like she’s keen to get a good run of games first.
“I would love to compete beforehand,” said Raducanu, when asked about the Sunshine Double. “I think now to go back, train a bit, clean up some things. It then depends on the ranking and the wild card situation.”
And what about the team around her? Nick Cavaday, the youth coach she first worked with when she was six at Bromley Tennis Academy, is set to continue in the near future. Raducanu said: “The work we are doing is progressing, because it was not good to get me to this level from nothing after only six weeks.”
The next question is whether she should hire a traveling fitness trainer, especially given her progress in setting sets. Three of her four matches on this trip to Australia and New Zealand were three players, and in two of them she was seriously undermined by her loss of physical condition. Even when she beat Elena-Gabriela Ruse in Auckland, she came under pressure from a ferocious opponent and only managed to save herself through some death-serving clustering.
Raducanu was open to this idea. “I worked with a very good trainer back in London,” she said. “But he’s with the Lawn Tennis Association, so I don’t know if he travels too much. I think it’s a great idea to occasionally travel with a fitness coach for a few weeks. For example, when the competitions are two-week events [which applies to both Indian Wells and Miami]. If you retire early, a small 10-day block is a great opportunity. So I think it’s something to look at. But in the near future. I think he’s getting more time in practice to clean up any bugs.”
Bugs were definitely a concern for Raducanu against Wang. She found herself retching into a towel during the third set, having contracted what she suggested was some kind of gastric virus. And then there was the forehand glitch – more than the sort of thing she was referring to above – which saw her airmail perhaps a dozen balls well over the baseline.
Thursday night still provided a good performance, however, against an opponent who plays in a style similar to Raducanu herself. And the whole experience of being back on 1573 Arena – the same court where she won her first round match last year – felt very inspiring.
“It’s quite surreal,” she said of the heartfelt support she received from fans, including many British expats. “I really missed that feeling. Wow, I feel like being away and coming back, I was very surprised and amazed at the amount of support I was getting. So I was really introducing him but not like saying goodbye. I was more like ‘Well, I want to keep going and keep watching them all’.”
