By
It’s time to stop the hate flowing in Emma Raducanu’s direction.
She will be the first to accept her performances at the 2021 US Open, as long as she doesn’t live up to the hype surrounding her after a stunning victory in New York.
However, the army of social media snipers who continue to pounce on her after each defeat should remove their venom from this debate with meaningless glee.
This is the young woman who turned the world upside down with the most amazing US Open success story in the history of tennis.
No qualifier came close to winning a major title until Raducanu broke through the tennis world’s glass ceiling and catapulted herself into international stardom, with the commercial backing that was an inevitable byproduct of that success.
As always in this cruel world, those who look at Radukan’s story with jealous eyes see that bitterness persist.
Her opponents on the court see Radukan as a big scalp for the taking and should take advantage of what looks like a good draw with a player struggling to find her footing on the WTA Tour in the competitive world of sports.
What is difficult to understand is the joy her detractors take from her loss.
Tennis365’s Facebook page blew up after a post on Radukanu confirmed that she is on the verge of dropping out of the top 100 after 18 months of misery and injury-riddled control.
Of the hundreds of comments that responded to the post, many were negative and seemed to rejoice in Raducan’s downfall.
Why would any tennis fan want a player who has been a huge asset to the women’s game for years to fail and retire from the sport?
It’s a no-nonsense position, but maybe we shouldn’t try and analyze why haters spread their hate on social media.
We see similar reactions from Novak Djokovic’s fans and critics alike, but the world No. 1 has a history that has divided opinion for years and explains why many around the world want to express their opinions. A sports giant that doesn’t always follow the usual rule book.
Raducanu’s crime seems to be that she signed too many sponsorship deals and made a lot of quick money from her US Open victory, but anyone in her position would have done the same.
She may be spending more time promoting the brands she’s associated with, but those around the British No. 1 say her passion for tennis hasn’t diminished and her desire to succeed burns as brightly as ever.
At the age of 20, it’s too early to write off a player who has proven to win on the biggest stage and still has a decade ahead of her to try and achieve that feat.
Raducanu is out of the depth on clay courts as she has no experience on them, but let’s see how she plays on grass courts next month and then the following US hard court season.
In the year If we reach the end of 2023 and Raducanu is around 150, she will need to enter the ITF World Tennis Tour events to raise her level and regain confidence in her game.
That might not be a bad development for her career, but it’s a distraction she can do without, seemingly driving a social media campaign that says she’s going to fail.
Radukanu is a great asset to our sport and we must all be willing to see her succeed.
People who push a different agenda are not true tennis fans.
Read more: Madrid Open draw Emma Raducanu did not have any support
