Emma Raducanu’s team tried to talk her out of playing through the pain barrier during Thursday’s second-round defeat at the Australian Open.
The British No1 suffered a nasty blister on her right hand prior to the 6-4 4-6 6-3 defeat to Danka Kovinic, which cut deeper in the match and, at stages, limited her almost solely to playing a slice forehand.
Despite being advised by some of her camp not to play the match, she insisted that was not an option, and neither was withdrawing during the contest.
“I was struggling with my hand before the match,” Raducanu said. “There were some people in my team that maybe didn’t want me to play but I wanted to go out there and fight through it, see how far I could get.”
Of the prospect of possibly pulling out midway through the match, she said: “That thought was there when I was slicing forehands and really struggling. Do I? I didn’t want to. As I said, some people in my team didn’t even want me to go out there.
“I fought so hard just to come out to Australia and play here, and I didn’t want to go out like that. So, I just left it all out on the court. And I was proud of how I kept fighting even in those situations where I was really struggling. I just kept hanging in there.”
Raducanu said her entire spell in Australia, where she arrived after recovering from Covid, which she tested positive for before Christmas, had been hampered by blisters.
It made her first-round win over former US Open champion Sloane Stephens all the more impressive, so too her battling performance against Kovinic.
“I have been struggling with blisters since I started playing really in Australia because 21 days, no tennis, my hands got pretty soft,” she explained. “From day one, day two, I was getting blisters pop up here and there.
“This particular one has been with me for about five days and I have been trying to tape it for every practice and it would like harden and dry out but, then, once I would play again another layer would just keep ripping off.
“It ended up being pretty deep. But it’s a bit annoying because I know it’s something that will heal in a few days. It’s unfortunate timing.”
