Auckland Chief Lamperin hits back at Raducanu court comments

Friday, 06 January 2023 at 17:30

Updated at Sunday, 10 December 2023 at 12:38

bySebastian Dahlman

Emma Raducanu blamed the tennis courts at the ASB Classic in Auckland as a reason for her injury, but tournament director Nicolas Lamperin clapped back.

To start the 2023 season, the young Brit chose to participate in Auckland, even though it was not easy to convince Raducanu to play at the ASB Classic, according to the tournament director.

But once the tournament arrived, both would probably regret the decision, as the British player injured herself, while Lamperin got a lot of negative attention for the WTA 250 tournament.

Raducanu rolled her ankle against Viktoria Kuzmova, forcing her to retire from the match due to the injury. Her Australian Open campaign is now in doubt, and she talked about the courts being slippery after her retirement.

"The courts are incredibly slick, like very slippery, so to be honest it’s not a surprise that this happened to someone."

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Raducanu was really disappointed by injuring herself, and probably in some anger, she said that it was not surprising that someone got injured, as the courts were "very slippery." Lamperin took issue with that, hitting back at Raducanu in an interview with stuff.co.nz.

"It is still GreenSet. The courts have been laid out by the same company. We are obviously very sorry about Emma’s injury. Every player works really hard in the off season and that’s not what you expect when you play a tournament in week one."

The tournament had to move from outdoors to indoors because of the weather, and that was the change that Raducanu wasn't happy about, but according to Lamperin, the conditions were the same, and injuries can happen anywhere.

"However, injuries happen all the time, it could have happened on an outdoor court. We feel for the situation, but we also say that these courts are fit to play."