Emma Raducanu’s career has, and continues to be, the most unpredictable entity in sport.
She’s moved from unknown to grand slam winner to a perennially injury-hit player within the space of just a few short years.
And what’s even harder to figure out is Raducanu as a person.
She is, quite clearly, someone who cares little about what people think about her, or how her actions will be perceived.
In itself, that’s an undeniably valuable asset for any person to possess, and even more so for someone in the public eye but it’s hard not to feel that Raducanu is making her life far more difficult than it need be.
And so, given her disregard for her public persona, it was interesting to hear her insist at the Australian Open earlier this week that things are fine between her and Andy Murray. COMPLETELY FINE, okay?
Few will have forgotten the part Raducanu played in the latter stage of Murray’s career and, specifically, his departure from Wimbledon, the grand slam he won twice to cement his status as one of Britain’s greatest-ever sportsmen.
Last summer’s Wimbledon was Murray’s final appearance in Britain before he hung up his racquet just a few weeks later at the Paris Olympics.
Murray’s final appearance at the All England Club was due to be his mixed doubles appearance alongside Raducanu.
But, at the last minute, the Englishwoman withdrew citing stiffness in her wrist, ensuring Murray was denied the Wimbledon farewell he’d planned.
There was considerable outcry at the time, with the most notable commentary coming from Murray’s mother Judy, who replied to a tweet from a television presenter calling Raducanu’s withdrawal “astonishing” with the message: “Yes, astonishing.”
At the time, Murray himself remained quiet on the issue but there were more than a few suggestions from his camp that they were all “hugely disappointed” by Raducanu’s late withdrawal.
Earlier this week, in the aftermath of her second round win over Amanda Anisimova at the Australian Open, Raducanu revealed she’d apologised to Murray following the Wimbledon debacle.
“Afterwards I sent him a long message basically apologising if I caused any trouble, I guess, at Wimbledon, that's definitely the last thing I want,” she said, before revealing she’d bumped into Murray who, of course, is in Melbourne coaching Novak Djokovic, and they exchanged pleasantries.
Raducanu is a strange creature.
She is, clearly, an excellent tennis player.
Her US Open win in 2021 is the stand-out result but she has also recorded enough impressive performances to suggest that grand slam victory wasn’t merely a fluke.
In her defence, she had no blueprint in which to copy.
Her US Open win, which saw her become the first-ever qualifier to win a grand slam title, had never been done before. Following that victory in New York, she became a literal overnight celebrity, going from a complete unknown outwith tennis circles to someone who was recognised across the world. She found herself being invited to the most glamorous of events and was on the receiving end of numerous multi-million pound sponsorship deals.
This would, undeniably, be difficult for anyone to get their head round.
But still, the way Raducanu has navigated her career over the past few years has been impossible to understand.
Her coaching set-up is an obvious case in point. She’s flitted between coaches, discarding them as soon as she believes she’s got what she needs from them.
And her refusal until very recently to employ a fitness coach has been a decision that has, given how beset by injuries she’s been, surely set her career back significantly.
Similarly, while it’s easy to see why she accepted quite so many high-profile sponsorship deals, it’s also difficult to argue that such a demanding schedule with her sponsors did her many favours in a tennis sense.
Raducanu is someone who, quite clearly, is relatively unbothered by what people say about her, even within the tennis world.
But in listening to Raducanu insist that she and Andy Murray are on completely civil terms, it’s hard not to take from these comments that she’s slowly starting to realise that anything that makes her life harder - like withdrawing from Murray’s last-ever match at Wimbledon - isn’t really a smart move and it does nothing but add more stress to an already stressful lifestyle of being a professional tennis player.
Nobody is suggesting that Raducanu should make decisions in order to please anyone else, never mind the public, but she’s someone who would surely benefit from flying somewhat under the radar for a while, as far as that’s possible.
Certainly, the fact she was at pains to insist there’s no beef between her and Murray suggests she realises that falling out with Britain’s greatest-ever tennis player isn’t the smartest move.
Disposing of coaches left, right and centre; dumping Murray as her mixed doubled partner and ruining his retirement party; entering then withdrawing from tournaments at the drop of a hat - these are all things that attract unwanted and unnecessary attention.
Every elite tennis player on the planet would agree that the fewer distractions they have off-court, the better it is for them on-court.
And for Raducanu, a criticism-free off-court life would, I’ll bet, make her on-court life far more fruitful.
