The 22-year-old is making her injury comeback right at the end of the season on Billie Jean King Cup duty

November 14, 2024 4:58 pm

Emma Raducanu had a birthday this week.

A firm fixture in the sporting landscape and with enough highs and lows in her career for a lifetime, it might surprise some people that it was only her 22nd.

It could hardly have been much more low key, as she celebrated it with team-mates and Great Britain team staff in Malaga as they hunkered down, practice for the day cancelled due to a red alert weather warning, with rain so severe forecast that even indoor tennis was not possible.

On Friday, she will make her competitive comeback with a first match for two months, last seen retiring injured against Daria Kasatkina in South Korea with what it transpired was a left foot problem. She was later spotted in a protective boot and on crutches, raising fears of another lengthy spell. It would have been easy to end her season there and take a a full three months off before returning in Australia in January, but it is instructive of Raducanu’s fresh approach to the game that she is in Spain on Billie Jean King Cup duty, a well-timed rehearsal for the start of next season.

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“I’m looking forward to next year, hopefully having a better set-up in place to provide that,” Raducanu said.

“Also, I think I hopefully can play some more tournaments too. This year I missed a few which, looking back, I might have played. So just putting myself out there a bit more.”

Even in those three sentences, there is much to unpick. The better set-up refers to a more settled coaching team, the changing nature of which has been the subject of much criticism since she won the US Open in 2021 and split with her coach just a few weeks later. Raducanu has worked with Nick Cavaday, a former childhood coach of hers, all year and according to The Telegraph, she is in talks with Yutaka Nakamura, a highly-respected fitness coach who previously worked with Maria Sharapova. Raducanu has never employed a full-time fitness coach, unlike the majority of the tour.

Her regret at having missed tournaments “which I might have played” – she only played 13 events in 2024 – is also interesting, perhaps alluding to elective absences from the French Open and the Olympics. Admissions of regret have been rare from the Raducanu camp, usually doubling down on doing things their own way instead.

One thing she has not missed in 2024 is Billie Jean King Cup duty. Having controversially skipped a 2023 tie in Coventry, only to play at a sponsor’s event in Germany a few days later, Raducanu was a key part of Great Britain’s win over France in Le Portel back in April. On her least favourite surface clay, she came from a set down to win in both her singles matches, beating Caroline Garcia and then Diane Parry. In her whole professional career, she has only done that on nine other occasions, and only once against players ranked higher than Garcia or Parry.

“I think something about the team competition is that, even when you’re down – like, I was a set down in both matches – you keep fighting,” Raducanu said this week.

“It’s not that you wouldn’t necessarily want to in a normal tournament, but it’s just that extra motivation to fight right until the end.”

With 12 professional retirements to her name, her appetite for the fight has been questioned before, but the change in dynamic at BJK Cup clearly brings out the best of her.

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Perhaps it is the stability the British team offers that helps Raducanu find her best self. Captain Anne Keothavong is certainly not a yes-woman and has criticised the 22-year-old before, but has also known Raducanu for her whole career. So too Iain Bates, head of women’s tennis at the LTA, who was sat next to Raducanu when she blew out her birthday candles on Wednesday. On her other side was Will Herbert, the physio she called her “mechanic” during that breakthrough summer, one of a sea of familiar, unchanging faces that make national team duty such a comfortable environment to work in.

Raducanu will not need to produce her best tennis on Friday to beat Germany: she will play as Britain’s No 2 singles player against either Jule Niemeier or Tatjana Maria, ranked 92 and 101 in the world before in-form Katie Boulter takes on Laura Siegemund. The doubles rubber should not be required.

Canada, the defending champions, will be a much stiffer test in the quarter-finals, although again Raducanu will be a favourite in her tie against Rebecca Marino or Marina Stakusic, both ranked outside the top 100. The Canadians will hope Leylah Fernandez, who lost the US Open final to Raducanu three years ago, can once again bring home the bacon in singles and doubles: last year she won four matches on her own and a crucial doubles rubber against Czechia in the semi-finals.

If Raducanu can do something similarly virtuosic, it will be the perfect springboard for the 2025 season.

“I’m looking forward to building, putting in a really good pre-season, and setting off next year to hopefully be able to play a full season and put some good work in on the road too.”