"I’m focused on improvements" - Emma Raducanu ahead of clay season

Wednesday, 13 April 2022 at 10:15

Updated at Friday, 01 November 2024 at 22:34

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byErik Virostko

As a Porsche ambassador, Emma Raducanu will be competing at the 2022 Porsche Tennis Grand Prix as she spoke about a tournament and her motivation in a recent interview.

After her meteoric rise last year, Emma Raducanu lost five out of seven matches she played this season, and therefore, she's facing the difficult challenge of remaining at the top of the rankings.

As the clay-court season kicks off, the 19-year-old world number 12 will play at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix as one of the ambassadors of the brand.

Playing in Stuttgart will be an interesting experience for Raducanu as she has never competed at the WTA 500 tournament in the German city before, and now she will be facing a field that so far includes nine players from the Top 10.

"It will be challenging but I have already won matches against some of these players in my short experience on tour. It would be very motivating to add to my wins against the best players in the world, especially on clay where I have little experience as there aren’t really any clay courts in the UK."

"This clay season with the French Open as the highlight will be an interesting challenge, but one I am looking forward to."

On top of that, it will be Raducanu's first-ever WTA Tour-level tournament on clay, so it's a nice coincidence for the Brit that it's a tournament of one of her sponsors.

"I am excited to play my first ever WTA tournament on clay. It’s nice that it’s the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix. I’ve been following the event since I was young and for me it was always the tournament where the winner gets a Porsche."

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The Porsche Tennis Grand Prix is a unique event, as it offers a brand-new car to the winner every year, and it's one of the very few tournaments that does that. Raducanu admitted that it's a unique trait of the tournament that she has always remembered.

"It was unique and it has stayed on my mind. Since being on the Tour, I have heard so many good things about the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix. I know it’s one of the most popular tournaments on the calendar which is no wonder – who doesn’t want to win a Porsche?"

Despite already winning a Grand Slam title, the teenager still wants to improve, and that's why she's looking forward to the challenges in front of her, one of them being the 2022 Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart.

"I think new challenges will always present themselves and you’ll always be resetting goals. Personally I’m very focused on the improvements I can make in my game and that motivates me a lot."