Emma Raducanu is away from tennis right now but she sat down with the Sunday Times for an exclusive interview where she talked about her career.
It was a very interesting interview by Raducanu where she shared some insight into her career and how everything unfolded from her perspective. All of was were outside looking in so it's tough to say how it looked from the other side but she shared it in this very interesting interview. Speaking about the US Open win, Raducanu admitted that sometimes she wishes she never won it:
“I’ve had a lot of setbacks, one after the other. I am resilient,
my tolerance is high, but it’s not easy. And sometimes I think to
myself I wish I’d never won the US Open, I wish that didn’t happen. Then I am like, remember that feeling, remember that promise, because it was completely pure. When
I started playing (in the US Open final) … People talk about flow. I
have only experienced that twice in my life and that was one of them. I
was so in the moment it was insane. I wasn’t even thinking, my body was
just moving.”
While the moment was certainly noteworthy it brought with it some other things like needed to mature quickly. The Tour is a brutal surrounding, something she wasn't ready for initially:
"I had to mature very quickly. When I won I was extremely naive. What I have realised in the past two years, the tour and everything that comes with it, it’s not a very nice, trusting and safe space. You have to be on guard because there are a lot of sharks out there. I think people in the industry, especially with me because I was 19, now 20, they see me as a piggy bank. It has been difficult to navigate. I have been burnt a few times. I have learnt, keep your circle as small as possible.”
She also added:
“I was under so much pressure to perform, people had no idea what
was going on and I had to have this façade, to keep everything
inside. It has been really hard. And then to be
scrutinised for it when they don’t know what is going on. I am very
young and still learning and making mistakes. It is a lot harder when
you are making mistakes in front of everyone and everyone has something
to say about it.”