Does Emma Raducanu Get Unfair Criticism?

Many people receive the question of what happened to Emma Raducanu many times and I'm finally going to respond to it myself. It's a very complex situation but generally speaking when someone wins a huge title for example a grand slam like Emma Raducanu did in 2021 all of a sudden there's a tremendous amount of pressure on that player.

Sometimes players after winning a huge title go on a losing slump. For example Sloan Stephens won the US Open and couldn't win a match for many months until finally regaining her form by winning Miami and then making it to the finals of the French Open. Another example is Monica Puig who won the Olympics and couldn't find her best form after claiming the gold medal. Nevertheless, we will discuss if Raducanu will ever get out of this slump and start winning big matches again.

Relaxed & Free

When I analyze Raducanu's game now versus the way she played in the US Open I can definitely see a little bit of a difference in how freely she's playing. I feel like at the US Open she was playing more aggressively, she was hitting the ball deeper. I find now that it doesn't look like she's playing freely, often her balls have a little bit more of a tendency to land short. Now this obviously has nothing to do with her technique because her technique is excellent. Instead, this has to do with her confidence which she doesn't have right now.

Many people think that Raducanu jumped on the scene and became unbelievably famous after winning the US Open in 2021. However, I remember vividly when she made the fourth round of Wimbledon prior to the US Open. This is when I first heard the name Emma Raducanu because she happens to be from England and the media hyped her up like they tend to do with players from that country. She did make it to the fourth round of that tournament which is a great result for an 18-year-old and she did beat Vondrousova for example in the second round in straight sets who won Wimbledon a few years later.

Big Rise

Then of course, she completely exploded after she won the US Open. Raducanu became a superstar. Everybody knew her name. Now the crazy thing about her winning the US Open is how she won it without dropping a set. I think there was one set in the qualies that went to 7-5 but she pretty much destroyed everyone and won 10 matches in a row. After her run, a lot of people were writing that this was an easy tournament and that she had an easy draw. There is no such thing as an easy draw. Everybody was at this US Open. Osaka was there, Barty was there, Sabalenka was there, Swiatek was there and all of them just happened to lose to somebody else.

In many ways when you play somebody that's lower ranked there could be more pressure in later rounds of a grand slam than playing a higher ranked player. So this does not diminish her performance at the US Open by any means. Whoever came in her path was put away with ease. As a result, by the way she won that tournament, it seemed she was going to become the number one player in the world and that she was going to continue winning big titles.

Falling Down The Ranks

After her win, she started losing early in tournaments. She did finish 2021 ranked 19 in the world, but then the following year she was losing a lot of matches. She finished that year 78 in the world. Last year, 2023, she finished 298 in the world. On top of all this pressure that she was dealing with and not coping well with it, she also had a tremendous amount of injury. She had three surgeries, two on her wrists and one on her ankle. Now the good thing is that she's only 21 years old. She did win her first two matches at Indian Wells and played well against Sabalenka.

The only way to rebuild confidence in tennis is by winning tennis matches. To start achieving results like her US Open run, she needs to win matches. What happened prior to the US Open? She won four matches at Wimbledon. Yes, she did play some ITFs afterward. She played in Landisville where she made it to the quarters. T hen she played an ITF in Chicago right before the US Open where she made the final. So when she went into the qualifiers at the US Open, she had a lot of consecutive match wins under her belt and she was very confident.

In the last two years, she has not won many matches in a row. All it takes is to start winning consecutive matches. If she can go on a run on the clay possibly that is really the only way for her to be where everybody here expects her to be. Unfortunately, now with her ranking being in the 200s, she is going to have tough draws.

Since she did end up losing to Sabalenka, I don’t know why she doesn’t enter the qualies of a tournament and try to build your confidence that way? After all, she won the US Open after playing qualifiers at the US Open, so how bad can that be? Or maybe even go down a level and start playing ITFs. She played two ITFs prior to winning the US Open, so it makes a lot of sense to maybe play some ITFs and get her confidence back that way. Again, confidence in tennis is the most important thing when you are out of it. When you are on a losing streak. This is something that's very difficult to get out of.

Social Media

One additional thing about Emma that I want to talk about is the amount of hate that she's getting on social media. Max Eisenbud, her agent, said that it's okay to criticize Emma, to say that she might have a weak serve, but don't be malicious, don't insult her because she doesn't deserve it. What did she do to anyone other than not live up to the insane expectations? But unfortunately, the hate that some players are getting is unbelievable.

See, I'm deep in social media and I read everything, and the player that gets the most hate undeservingly is Genie Bouchard. Every time Genie Bouchard posts something tennis-related in the past, now it's pickleball-related, she gets a tremendous amount of hate and undeservingly so because Genie Bouchard was an unbelievable player.

Now if you read the comments without knowing Genie, you would come to the conclusion that she can barely play tennis. But I'm going to first tell you that Genie's career-high ranking was number five in the world, and that is an insane ranking to be among the best five players in the world. Do you know how difficult it is to get only one ATP Point? Check out the Tennis Brother Felix videos and you will see what the level is even trying to get one ATP point.

Harder Than Expected

And some of you guys will say, well it's probably a lot easier on the WTA. No, it's not. You go to some of those lower-level ITF tournaments on the women's side and you're going to see that the level is very high. The thing that's missing on social media often especially when we're talking about women is respect. You have to respect a player like Genie Bouchard who trained extremely hard to get where she got in her tennis career.

She was a junior Wimbledon champion, for example. A lot of these professional players start very young. When you look at the age when they retire and add the amount of time from when they started, it's often 25 years or more of nonstop grueling tennis practice, tennis travel, tennis tournaments. So anyone that achieves this extremely high level of play deserves respect in my opinion.

But when you read social media, they get the exact opposite. Raducanu, on the other hand, is getting even more attention than Bouchard because she happens to be in a media-crazy place regarding athletes, which is England. The amount of hate that she's getting is comparable to Bouchard, and that in my opinion is just completely unfair.

Final Thoughts

Emma Raducanu will always be a US Open champion. There is no asterisk around it. It doesn't matter if she stops playing tennis tomorrow. She's a US Open champion for the rest of her life. But also Raducanu is only 21, and I believe that she has the potential to get back into the top 20. Now can she win another grand slam? It's going to be unbelievably difficult to win another one even if she had been playing well up to this point.

That's something that's so hard to do. It's going to be tough. But I will say one thing. The fact that she was not scared to win one at the age of 18. Or the fact that she played so freely throughout the whole tournament and was able to beat everyone quite comfortably, 10 matches in a row, tells you of the caliber of Raducanu. And if she puts herself in a similar situation again, it's quite possible that she can win another one.