By Oliver Brown
Just five hours into Emma Raducanu’s year as a US Open champion, you could sense her being drawn into an uncomfortably oppressive world. The scene was a near-deserted press restaurant at Arthur Ashe Stadium, where she talked breathlessly about reaching one million Instagram followers and about how, even with $3 million in prize money, she wanted nothing more than to buy a pair of AirPods.
Emma Raducanu lost in the first round of the US Open.Credit:AP
It was an unfiltered, uplifting conversation, just as you would expect from a teenager barely beginning to understand what had happened to her. And yet at the door, waiting to escort her to her next engagement, were no fewer than six bodyguards. You knew in that instant that she would never be quite the same carefree character again.
A full year has elapsed since that night of nights at Flushing Meadows, and Raducanu seems visibly to be wilting under the inflated expectations. So crestfallen was she by a first-round exit at her favourite tournament that, during her press conference, she pulled the brim of her purple Nike cap down over her eyes, as if nervous of revealing her true emotions. Juxtapose this with the same setting last September – where she had greeted reporters in a black sequined dress with the immortal words: “I’m great, how’s your evening?” – and you form a fair sense of the toll it has all taken.
In 12 months, Raducanu has won just 12 matches on tour. Even by the standards of one-slam wonders, that is quite the regression to the mean.
But the other startling figure is the number of endorsements she has acquired over the same period: 10. Max Eisenbud, her agent, was unapologetic about sweating the brand. “The iron is hot,” he declared. “We’re striking.”
Raducanu’s life has been rearranged at a rate to which perhaps only Maria Sharapova, who won Wimbledon in 2004 aged 17, could relate. Eisenbud was the man overseeing that transformation, too. But he has acknowledged how the additional forces of social media, which did not exist 18 years ago, have made his latest protegee’s development move at “warp speed”.
Unnaturally fast, one might argue. For while she has amassed a fortune through her associations with Dior, Vodafone, British Airways and the rest, you would be hard pressed, looking at the chastened person vanquished by Alize Cornet, to argue that any of it has made her happier.
Happiness, let us not forget, is what made the Raducanu story such a tonic in the first place. Before the corporate suitors started massing, she stood out for the sheer joy she took in her own success. Think back to her Wimbledon win last year over Sorana Cirstea, where her smiles brought public adoration all around No 1 Court, or her dismantling of Maria Sakkari in a US Open semi-final, after which she turned to her little support team in wide-eyed disbelief. She was the most potent antidote to cynicism you could imagine.
Today, she struggles to radiate the same energy. Her demeanour seems more subdued, her interviews warier and more opaque, now that she has so many sponsors to keep on side. Perhaps it is just the time-honoured progression of the overnight superstar. Sharapova, after all, went quickly from being acclaimed as tennis’s Siberian sensation to being criticised as a lofty ice maiden. But does it always have to be this way? Must Raducanu, purely by dint of her precocious talent, be the latest teenage phenomenon to have the life force media-managed out of her?
There was one telling admission in her remarks after losing to Cornet. “In a way, I’m happy because it’s a clean slate,” she said. “The target will be off my back slightly.” It was the closest she had come to suggesting that she wanted a semblance of her old life back.
Naturally, a return to anonymity would be impossible. But there was a certain pathos in how she craved revisiting a time when she could plot her own path, and when every result was not framed in portentous, all-or-nothing terms.
It appears as if Raducanu is relishing a drift back into the chorus line.
Does she believe that, as the soon-to-be world No 80, she will be at a level where she can win regularly again? The more plausible interpretation is that she is simply ground down by the constant exposure and pressure.
When nothing was expected of her, she blossomed. When everything was expected of her, she folded.
Some strange decisions by the Raducanu camp contributed to this bleak setback under the floodlights on Ashe. The sacking of Andrew Richardson, the unassuming coach who led her from challengers to the top of the world six weeks later, still looks like an act of reckless hubris.
All the subsequent changes in advice have yielded only confusion and inconsistency on court.
What Raducanu most conspicuously needs is to rediscover the pure thrill of playing again. If she can electrify once, she can do so again.
But the relentless monetising of her cross-cultural appeal has extinguished some of her spark. The past year of her life serves as an object lesson in the dangers of having too much, too soon.
The Telegraph, UK
