"If she plays 22, 23 tournaments next year, that would be a great achievement": Henman believes Raducanu return expectations should be tempered

Former tennis player Tim Henman expressed his opinion that playing a full year would be a significant achievement for Emma Raducanu in 2024.

Raducanu participated in only five tournaments during 2023, with five wins and five losses. The young British athlete has been dealing with injuries since her impressive title at the 2021 US Open and, after the clay season, announced that she would undergo wrist surgery.

Sky Sports expert and former tennis player Tim Henman recently discussed the expectations surrounding Raducanu and the goals she should set for herself:

“If she plays 22, 23 tournaments next year, that would be a great achievement, because the only way you’re going to do that is if you’re fit and healthy,”

“If she’s fit and healthy, the results will come. She’s that good a player. She’s too good not to win matches.”

Henman also expressed the opinion that Raducanu's decision to undergo surgery and take the necessary recovery time was the right choice.

“No one as a professional athlete likes to be injured or wants to be injured. “Having said that, I think this has been and will be a great opportunity to really build a foundation, and it’s really around physical resilience.”

“She hasn’t had the opportunity to do the big, extended periods of physical training. Tennis ability is never going to be an issue but because of her journey, just being so unexpected coming out of Covid and playing at Wimbledon, with no real physical foundation, and then doing what she did in New York, she’s always been playing catch up,” Henman said.

“And so now having had the surgeries, which I believe have been a success, she can really put in the hard yards to build up that physicality for her then to be able to let her tennis do the talking,” he added.

"If she can be fit and healthy, she’ll get back in the top 100 comfortably and she’ll get back in the top 50. And who knows from there?

“So I’m very positive and optimistic. She’s such a great player that everybody would love to see Emma at the US Open, but she’s gonna have so many opportunities ahead of her. She and we just need to be a little bit patient,” Henman concluded.