Former Olympic champion Monica Puig urges Raducanu to focus less on social media: "She still needs time to develop and time to find out who she is"

Former Olympic champion Monica Puig urges Raducanu to focus less on social media and things outside of tennis if she hopes to continue her tennis career.

Raducanu was accused many times of putting tennis second after rising to stardom following her surprising US Open win. The British player didn't have a very good year in 2022 suffering from many injuries. Media quickly attributed that to a lack of practice time and when she injured herself in Auckland, the same headlines returned.

Puig can relate to some of that as she rose to stardom when she surprisingly won the gold medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Drawing from her own experiences, Puig said:

"She still needs time to develop and time to find out who she is as a tennis player, who she is as a person and I can sympathise with her because when I won the Olympics it came out of nowhere. I didn't have as much media attention as she does and I can only imagine coming from the UK where something like that is so big. It just exploded."

Another thing Puig advised Raducan is to avoid social media. As a young person, Raducanu is fairly active on social media and it's something that can be distractful, particularly for athletes:

"Don't focus on social media because we all know that social media is a great tool to boost your brand but it can be toxic, especially for a person like Raducanu who has so many people following her and so many people who want to see her succeed and also a lot of people who don't. You're not going to have everybody who loves you. You're going to have those who are not going to like you."