John McEnroe believes the pressure of winning one of the grand slams is proving too much to bear for Emma Raducanu at the moment. The British number one crashed out of the French Open with a 6-3, 1-6, 1-6 defeat to Aliaksandra Sasnovich.
The defeat marked the teen’s second successive exit from a major at the second round, a far cry from her historic run to the US Open title last September. This prompted McEnroe to suggest that the Bromley local is struggling with the added attention on her since joining the sport’s elite group of Grand Slam winners so early in her career.
McEnroe told Eurosport : “We have got to keep a little perspective here. At Wimbledon last year she was unable to finish a match because of stress and it got to be too much for her. Then she came out and did something that no one has ever done – man or woman – in 150 years of tennis, coming from the qualifying and winning. All of a sudden, there is this pressure on her, this expectation, that has gotten a little bit overwhelming as well.”
It is well documented that Raducanu has made multiple alterations to her coaching team since winning at Flushing Meadows in 2021. Many were surprised to see the Brit part ways with Andrew Richardson after the US Open, though he was always on a short-term deal. When the German hired Torben Beltz as her new coach, it was expected their partnership would blossom and Raducanu would develop well under his tutelage.
But last month, the pair split after just five months, and the young star has yet to hire someone new. The number of changes on her team has baffled McEnroe, who said: “She has changed coaches three, four or five times which is unbelievable for someone who has just come off winning a major.
“She has sort of put herself in a difficult position because a lot is expected of her and with the people around her, we are not sure if she is comfortable with them just yet. Hopefully in the next year or two she will find that. Honestly, if I won the US Open having gone through qualifying, I wouldn’t change my coach at least for the next year, so I don’t understand that move.
"Obviously her parents are involved and they know more than I know. But this idea of a revolving door of coaches I just don’t think that’s good for any player, much less so for a player at this stage of her career.
"We have to wait and see and hopefully she finds someone she can stick with for a while.” The US Open champion finished the contest with 33 unforced errors and lost her second successive match to Sasnovich, the first coming at Indian Wells last year. The world number 12 seemed to drop her intensity mid-way through the encounter, which saw her lose momentum and was unable to recover.
Raducanu admits it is something she needs to work on as her attention turns to the grass court season. “I think before I would let the losses kind of affect me more so than I am right now,” she said, remaining positive.
"Now I just look at everything as a lesson, and I know exactly where I went wrong, where I can improve, where other people are better than me.”
