Stick or twist: it is the age-old dilemma of the elite athlete carrying an injury with a major event approaching. To play on, as Emma Raducanu has done since she started to feel discomfort in her lower back last week in Madrid, is to run the risk of doing further damage. Step back, though, and there is a danger of losing competitive sharpness at the very moment it is most needed. Understanding when to push through discomfort and when to back off is an art born of experience.
After Raducanu’s ailing back forced her to retire from her opening-round match against Bianca Andreescu at the Italian Open as she trailed 6-2, 2-1, the British 10th seed reflected ruefully on the absence of a guiding influence in her camp.
“Of course, I want to play every opportunity I have, and probably even when I shouldn’t,” said Raducanu, whose first full season on tour has been hampered by a catalogue of physical setbacks, the latest of which raises doubts about her participation at the French Open.
“But, you know, I just really need to be sensible. Sometimes I feel like I need a voice to, you know, just hold my hand, [say] ‘Do this, do that.’ I hope that I can just get my back right and my body fully fit. I think that next week might be a tight turnaround, even though I wanted to play next week and get more matches on clay. My back takes priority, so we’ll see what happens.”
Raducanu split with the experienced German coach Torben Beltz last month, the third such partnership she has dissolved since last summer, and in one sense her desire for firmer counsel seems at odds with her preference for seeking a varied range of input into her game. Equally, it is only natural that the 19-year-old, who has been accompanied in Rome by Iain Bates, the head of British women’s tennis, should need an informed voice in her corner in her first full season on tour. Managing her body has become as big a priority as managing her game.
“It sucks, because I just feel like a lot of the matches, looking back, I’m either playing with this or that,” said Raducanu, whose list of ailments this year has included a deep blister on her hand that undermined her Australian Open challenge, a hip injury that forced her to retire in Guadalajara, blistered feet and now a back problem. “
“Every single tournament, I’m learning what my body’s capable of, what it’s not. I’m learning what works, what doesn’t. It’s just I’m doing it in front of everyone. I’s something that I’ve accepted. I think it’s definitely had its challenges. I’m just kind of going through this process, just trying to develop. I think it will take me a little bit to fully figure out what’s working.”
If anyone in the game can relate to the unusual situation in which Raducanu finds herself, as a teenage US Open champion struggling to come to terms with the physical and mental demands of life as a touring professional, it is Andreescu. From injury setbacks and the sky-high expectations of an adoring public to adjusting to life in the glare of global stardom, the 21-year-old has seen and dealt with it all.
Within weeks of winning at Flushing Meadows in 2019 as a 19-year-old, after a summer blighted by a shoulder problem, Andreescu suffered a torn meniscus in her left knee and did not play again for 15 months. She had barely returned before she suffered an ankle injury and contracted Covid, just as Raducanu did during the off-season, when she was forced to abandon a planned training block. Numerous parallels exist between two women who were born within a few miles of each other in Canada and share Romanian heritage, but it is Andreescu’s resilience that Raducanu would most wish to emulate.
“I think that you really have to experience it to really know what you need,” said Andreescu when asked what it takes to adjust to the rigours of the tour. “You’re playing the best players, you really have to have the right nutrition, the right game plan – like physically, mentally, emotionally, everything.
“It’s not easy being on tour. From January to October, that’s a long time. You really have to schedule your training properly, your competition, all of that. You also have to know that injuries are a part of the game. But the best thing you can do is try to prevent. I think that’s kind of the advice I can give her.”
Andreescu, who took a break towards the end of last season during which she contemplated retirement, has shown encouraging form since returning to the sport in Stuttgart last month. It is easy to forget that, between repeated injuries and the global pandemic, she too is playing her first full clay-court season. The Canadian’s weight of shot off the ground and fine kick serve augur well for success on the surface, and results so far have been encouraging, with a narrow defeat to Aryna Sabalenka in Stuttgart followed by a crushing win over Danielle Collins in Madrid. Conditions at the Foro Italico are heavier than at those events, and against Raducanu her superior firepower told.
The pattern was set from the opening game, in which some errant hitting off the forehand landed Raducanu in immediate trouble. Boosted by a timely pair of aces, the Briton survived a seven-minute struggle, fending off a trio of break points. But she was soon in difficulty again, surviving a further three break points in her next service game before another missed forehand brought up a fourth. This time the pressure told, a double fault handing Andreescu an advantage she would never relinquish.
Even in these early stages, Raducanu’s physical limitations were apparent. She struggled to generate torque on her groundstrokes, a shortcoming exposed by Andreescu’s high-bouncing topspin, and prolonged service games only compounded her discomfort. “I was serving a lot,” said Raducanu. “They were long games. When I had to keep pushing up, it was just tough.”
While Raducanu looked understandably eager to finish the points quickly, repeatedly driving the ball close to the lines, Andreescu player with greater margin and consistency, favouring bigger targets. At 5-2, Raducanu took a lengthy medical timeout. She changed tack thereafter, applying more topspin and height to her groundstrokes, but she was winning less than half her service points and, when she was broken early in the second set, it became clear her race was run. “I can’t move,” she told the trainer.
Raducanu will now rest for a few days before making a decision on Roland Garros. “I think that everything is just taking a toll,” she said. “It’s probably just my body crying out, needs a little break.”