Raducanu Admits To Working On New 'Weapon' For 2025 Season After Victorious Comeback
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Emma Raducanu's injury did not stop the Briton from working on her serve, and she is determined to keep improving it in the coming months.
Raducanu was sidelined for nearly two months after spraining ligaments in her foot in the Korea Open quarterfinal. She retired after 31 minutes of her contest against Daria Kasatkina in Seoul.
Every player hates getting injured, but physical issues for Raducanu are particularly worrying because she was ruled out for nine months in 2023 with severe wrist and ankle injuries that required surgery.
Although it cannot be definitely proven, Raducanu's injuries could have been caused by her decision not to have a full-time fitness trainer since she preferred to keep her team as small a problem.
To Raducanu's credit, she has realized that was the wrong decision. The 2021 US Open champion is currently in talks with Naomi Osaka and Maria Sharapova's fitness trainer to add him to her team for 2025.
After working hard to return before the end of the 2025 season, Raducanu got herself fit in time for the ongoing Billie Jean King Cup Finals. Team Great Britain faced Team Germany in the opening round on Friday.
Raducanu produced a solid performance to overcome Jule Niemeier in straight sets. Katie Boulter's victory in the following match sealed a 2-0 win and set up a meeting with the defending champion Team Canada on Saturday.
Aside from a brief blip toward the end of the match, Raducanu's serve was very impressive against Niemeier. A journalist asked the 22-year-old about it in her press conference afterward, and she admitted to working on it while injured.
"Yeah, I have been working on it. I had a little bit of time off after Seoul. So, training for next year, I do want to work on my serve and make that a bit more of a weapon. Today I got a lot of free point, got a lot of aces, but it does come with a tradeoff, I think especially in the early stages when I'm figuring it out still."
"I have to take the double faults with the aces, I guess, and the free points. At this point in my development on it, I would say I'm very pleased with how I served. Some big points, I hit some aces, which is important. Yeah, I'm pleased that some of the practice has been paying off."
Raducanu said her serve has gone through a few variations, and she changed it after not liking her serving technique during the grass-court season.
"Yeah, I think naturally my serve has gone through a few different variations. I think if you look at myself on the grass, it was even shorter, and then I wasn't really loving that, so I changed it back a little bit longer."
"But I think oen thing with me is it just naturally kind of takes its own shape, and I need, like, constant top-up and constant reminders. Otherwise, my technique just turns into a complete different serve and I lose my rhythm on it."
Latest Comments
- Kyrgios will do anything to stay in the news.shirley19-12-2024
- A technical error.
MrMustard18-12-2024 - All that is said , all that is done. Nick has 0 grand slams wins. Everything else is hot 🥵 air.MrMustard18-12-2024
- All that is said , all that isMrMustard18-12-2024
- Kyrgios is a jerk.shirley17-12-2024
- If Jessica Pegula had to undergo such horror for using a bannes substance, so do these two tennis players. Penalty should apply to all players regardless of their excuses. They are professionals and know better!!
Stella112-12-2024 - All players should be treated the same for taking banned substances, if your no 1 in the world or no 300 man or woman you should not be allowed to keep playing,,VPH108-12-2024
- Ah, censored again. No one gets to read my comment. LOLjjluvsports08-12-2024
- Reynolds, could you list all the wars started by the U.S. and U.K., or will you run out of paper? Hypocrisy.jjluvsports06-12-2024
- IDK, it looks like to me that Raducanu should praise herself and her team for 'gaming the system' as in playing the points and ranking game. When you look at her season of wild cards, skipping tournaments (including the Paris Olympics!), retiring from losing matches and avoiding qualifying rounds, it seems like there was some plan to move up the ranks without actually playing a lot of tennis. And it worked! Congrats!RealityCheckers04-12-2024