Entering Wimbledon, Emma Raducanu Carries a Heavy Load of Expectations

“She’s so well-known people expect her to play well and win all the time,” Durie said. “Of course it’s not fair. She’s so young.”

It’s possible only Christine Truman can understand what Raducanu’s transformation into “Emma” has really been like. Truman, 81, reached the semifinals of Wimbledon when she was 16 years old and won the French Open two years later. The victory earned her a voucher worth 40 pounds ($112 in the United States at the time) that could not be used on anything tennis-related because that would violate the rules then on professionalism. But she became a household name practically overnight.

She was tall and blonde and easily recognized and could not go to the bread line, or ride the escalator down to the subway, or visit the pharmacist without being stopped. She met Winston Churchill, who had sent her congratulatory telegrams. He was quite old by then, though it was still a thrill for her.

“Winston, it’s the tennis girl,” Clementine Churchill said to her husband, who shook Truman’s hand.

In her mid-20s, Truman said, she thought she could both “have fun” and stay at the top of the game. It did not work so well.

Her advice to Raducanu?

“Remember what made you good and don’t lose sight of that,” she said in an interview last week.

And hire a coach.

“They can spur you on when you’re doing well and bring you back up when you’re doubting yourself,” she said. “If they have the belief, it rubs off on you.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/26/sports/tennis/raducanu-wimbledon-us-open.html