"Not having many friends" - Raducanu points out biggest sacrifice for tennis

Many professional tennis players had to make many sacrifices to get where they are and Emma Raducanu is no different.

The sacrifices made are specific to individual players as everybody is different and everybody likes different things. Raducanu's sacrifice was closely related to school and it was hard for a very long time before she finally made peace with it later on. Speaking about it ahead of her Washington debut, Emma explained:

"one of the biggest things for me was probably during my school. Because I was missing so much school from like 8. And you know how the secondary school is. All the kind of friendship groups are formed in year 7, 8, 9. And they are constantly changing in those early few years. So if you are not there, you kind of get isolated and forgotten about."

She added:

“I sort of made peace with that later on. But I’d say that not having as many friends from school is probably one of the biggest sacrifices I had to make.”

It worked out for Raducanu as she became a grand slam champion before the age of 20 but in the moment, it was tough.