emma raducanu is set to play only her second tournament after winning the u.s open. she did
play at indian wells and the worst of all cases happened. she lost to aliaksandra sasnovich,
ranked around 100, something like thatm with a pretty disappointing performance, if you watched
that match, it was a completely different emma than what the emma looked like at the us open.
none of the fire, none of the conviction that she could win any match no matter what. she made
mistakes that looked like mistakes of somebody who was utterly overwhelmed by the occasion.
her body language wasn't that great, the looks that she gave her interim coach jeremy bates
kind of bordered on helplessness. i want to say, and you know what, it didn't really surprise me
that she lost. and, of course, immediately after her loss, social media exploded with
unfortunately something that we have a word for in german: schadenfreude. taking delight in the
misery of others. there were a lot a lot of people who just went bananas on this kid.
and i don't think any other grand slam player who lost that early in the next
tournament or any other tournaments then has been called a one grand slam wonder so quickly.
and i wouldn't be surprised if emma raducanu doesn't do well for the rest of the year and
maybe even not that great in the australian summer. i played 10 years on tour and i've seen
many, many, many world-class players come up in the ranks and i understand better than most
that what emma radukanu did was anything but normal.
so for everyone who's quick to judge emma raducanu is a fluke, that it was all luck that she had
winning the u.s open. i need to tell you that you need to sit down. if you don't lose a set
basically for three weeks straight against any opponents that she had,
you are not a fluke. did she maybe have a less challenging draw than leylah fernandez? possibly,
but that doesn't take away from the fact that emma absolutely dominated for three weeks with
the increasing madness around her performance. and she still did not lose a set.
so no, she's not a fluke. what i do expect though is that she probably won't be able
to pull off performances over such a long period of time, over three weeks,
for a while longer yet. and that has nothing to do with her being not good enough or being a one-hit
wonder or whatever some people that really don't know what they're talking about are calling her.
it's just the fact that that is where she is in her development as an 18 year old
junior basically making the transition into the pros. and she now has to do that
with everybody and their mom, whether they have any idea what it's like to play on tour or not,
being quick to judge her. and unfortunately many of them take a whole lot of delight if she fails.
of course, there have been other players who have been dubbed one grand slam wonders. now i think
and i could be wrong but being a one-time grand slam champion is pretty darn amazing
so potentially i kind of would have liked that quite a lot. if i could call myself that. just a,
you know, side note. so who i'm thinking about when we talk about one grand slam
wonders , andy roddick comes to mind, jelena ostapenko, sloane stephens,
bianca andreescu for example. but why did it take so much longer for them to be called the
one grand slam wonder after their major titles and why is everybody jumping down emma's road
not even two months after she won the u.s open. and why do i think that she can still win a grand
slam? those are the questions that i think can be answered with me just knowing what a more
normal development of a young player looks like. somebody who is not called martina hingis,
steffi graf, serena and venus williams, monica seles. these are exceptions.that's not normal,
that is not how a young woman transitions into the pros. and i'm going to focus a
little bit more on the women's side, of course, because that's where i played for 10 years.
let's look at jelena ostapenko for instance. she was already an established world-class
player when she won the french open in 2017. she was ranked in the 40s, she already won
a few smaller wta tournaments, she had already beaten top 10 players. the surprise was mostly
because she was only 20 and she was the first unseeded player to win the french open since
the 1930s i believe. she also had a phenomenal junior career under her belt
which is a pretty good predictor but not a guarantee obviously that you make it on the wta.
she won junior wimbledon actually in 2014. so this is all to say that she basically had already
played full time because juniors these days are traveling almost just as much as the pros.
she had already played five, six, seven years at the very highest level of the sport. she knew
what it's like to go deep into draws, do this week after week, she knew what it's like to travel for
40, 45 weeks out of the year, living in hotels out of a suitcase, having no friends with her,
family being at home, being a celebrity. because if you win junior wimbledon
as a latvian, you are a celebrity. and getting a lot of attention at a young age.
it was still a major adjustment for her after winning the french open to now being expected
to win tier one tournaments. she had a little dip for a couple of years, we did have the pandemic
year so that's one year that most people can kind of write off but she's now stringing
together a fantastic season. she still has the chance to qualify for the wta year end finals.
pretty much the same exact thing in terms of development can be said for sloan stephens
career. had some top 10 wins, won at smaller tournaments, basically living the weird life
that is professional tennis for years and years already before she won the u.s open
in 2017 and then the following year made it to the finals of the french open and then ending at
number three of the rankings i believe in 2018. the career even without winning another
grand slam that sloan stevens and elena ostapenko have had and are still having
is still mind-blowing but of course if you win a grand slam the level is raised, the bar is raised
to extreme heights and to my mind sometimes unrealistically so. but if you've never played
a full year on tour you just don't know how taxing that is on your mind and on your body.
so let's talk about bianca andreescu for a second who can as we say in german sing a song of that.
in terms of development very, very much the same as the other two. great junior career,
won a couple of slams i think in junior doubles and then did well at smaller tournaments. kind
of you. know fought her way up, played qualies at tournaments and then started to win more and
more. but even before she won the 2019 open, she already was out an entire year and, of course,
we know after she won the u.s open, she had that year and a half knee injury basically. also during
the pandemic, but she couldn't have played had she wanted to. so that she's not way further in her
development is really the only reason to my mind is because her body just doesn't allow her to.
so it's more a matter of can she stay healthy for longer than 10, 11, 12 months and then let's
see if she can win another grand slam. i think she can but she has to stay healthy of course.
and, of course, a lot of people who are now you know saying, oh emma raducanu or jelena ostapenko,
anybody who is deemed a one grand slam wonder,
they can't deal with the pressure. you would think that they know what they signed up for.
no, what you're signing up for when you're turning pro is that you are going to make the
weirdest and loneliest life choice basically that i know of. you are making your passion
your job. you are expecting that you're traveling an insane number of days, you're expecting that
you're jumping time zone after time zone, you're in hotel. all you know is hotel, airport and the
tennis facility, that's pretty much all you know. so that's what you're signing up for because
you've done this for years as a junior. because they travel as much as the pros these days, it's
nuts. but what you're not signing up for is that when you are somewhat up in the rankings that all
sudden everybody thinks your personal property and they can do with you whatever the heck they want.
now i remember scenes when steffi graf tried to walk on a court in berlin and people were ripping
her bags off her shoulder to get a racket from her. this is a person who wants to
go hit tennis balls to practice and from then on she couldn't even take one step
at in berlin. that is nuts. and it's gotten worse because now 24/ 7 we see everything
through social media and very much distortedly so. so the other thing that you now have
is that people just utter death threats against you. yes, death threats. ask sloane stephens
what she got after she lost to coco gauff. because people are betting huge amounts of money on tennis
players and they then feel they can make their frustration public when that player loses.
including death threats, including threats of rape and whatever damage, to you know,
the player's family. so that is not what you sign up for. you still sign up to be treated as a human
being with respect and fairness but that goes out the window the second you make it big. and you
know what, millions are not going to make up for that? bringing it back to emma raducanu who's only
18 years old. an age usually where other young grand slam winners have already played two, three,
maybe even four years full time at the top of the game winning smaller wta tournaments and
some junior grand slams. so indian wells, the tournament she played right after
the us open, that was only emma's fourth wta event. let that sink in. she does not
necessarily have a standout junior career, she did reasonably well but didn't go very far in
junior grand slams. and she just didn't have that experience when you're 17, 18 when you transition
from juniors to pro. when you start to really uh play the smaller, the futures and challengers,
and travel 40, 45 weeks out of the years to, you know, tournaments all over the world everywhere.
she couldn't do that because of the pandemic, nobody could. you know it was a very,
very weird season. but that's exactly at that cusp where you usually get that experience.
so every single time now emma is going to a tournament it's a completely different experience.
and it is something to be said for "oh i'm going to tournament xyz, i played there last year. i
know where the hotel is. i know which restaurants there are. i know where the training courts are.
i know you know what the schedules are going to be like. i know what the spectators are going to be.
those are teeny, tiny things that really help you settle into your career.
humans are creatures of habit. i always loved it when i got to a tournament and i knew where what
was what. first time going to any tournament was always pretty nerve-wrecking for me. and
i can tell you that many of my peers felt the exact same way. so getting that experience is
something that emma doesn't have. so even without the additional pressure of the media, of now,
you know, obligations she has to the press, to the lta, that's now normal. but still she's only 18
years old. so even without all the additional pressure from media, from the fans, this is a
pretty daunting thing, making that transition from smaller tournaments to bigger tournaments and now
doing all of this with being the us open champion with four, four wta tournaments under your belt...
mind blown, got nothing on that one. but to this now also comes the fact that everybody
will dissect every single step that you take and as we say in german will add their mustard to it,
whether they know you or not. i don't know emma raducanu at all but i'm making the case
for her because i've been on tour and have seen what it can be like. now for instance, take a
comment on one of my videos that i posted about emma raducanu. by the way, if you missed those,
i'm going to put the links in the description. that person was very fast to call her
a party girl. okay? she went to the met gala. i don't think that anybody complained about
felix auger alliassime, matteo berrettini, venus and serena williams and naomi osaka being there.
because whoever put the met on actually is a huge tennis fan, so she gets that. um did she go to the
premiere of the newest bond movie? yes, she did. but whoever left that comment probably did not
see the post that said that she also had trained that day for six hours on court and in the gym.
and i've since deleted that post or that comment i have to say because he also added a racist slur.
so that is not gonna happen on my channel. but that is what has happened everywhere else.
if somebody can post this kind of crap, can leave that kind of crap
on a channel that has 1800 viewers -if you could subscribe actually that would be great
because i want to get up over 2 000- then can you imagine what they post everywhere else?
so to sum it up. i really wouldn't be surprised if emma raducanu has to pay her dues for the next
six, seven months. it's gonna be rough. it would be great if it didn't get as tough. but that
would be just completely normal to what somebody who is 18, 19 year old is experiencing on tour.
i mean it's for a good reason that there's only three other young women at age 18 in the top 100.
and they are going the exact route as it would be more normal. marta kostyuk, clara tauson,
camilla osario, they have a much more normal development. i don't think emma raducanu is in the
same wunderkind category as steffi graf, martina hingis, monica seles, serena and venus williams.
so what we're seeing is the absolute normal development of where she should be,
just with the difference that, of course ,she won the u.s open. can she win another grand slam?
absolutely! if those of us who understand and appreciate what emma raducanu has already done
and continue to support her and lift her up as the amazing young woman that she is and make our
voices louder than those who want to see her fail, then i'm thinking how scary that's gonna be in
two, three, four ,five years. because looking at what she can do at 18, once she has the experience
of playing four, five, six years on tour full-time under her belt, it's going to be
really scary and i think we will see another grand slam that emma raducanu is going to win.