Emma Raducanu lost her first match at the 2024 Madrid Open, and former WTA player and British BJKC Team Captain Anne Keothavong took issue with it.
Keothavong is the British Billie Jean King Cup Captain, and she's quite familiar with Raducanu. They've had an interesting relationship so far, as Keothavong made some comments about Raducanu in the past that were deemed a bit harsh.
They seemed to have made up recently when Raducanu proved the MVP for Great Britain in the Billie Jean King Cup Qualifiers. Keothavong even praised her performances, but she criticized her again after her Madrid Open loss.
Raducanu hinted at being very fatigued after a lot of tennis recently, which showed on the courts. According to Keothavong, she didn't really try all too hard at the WTA 1000 event, and she was not a fan of that.
"She acknowledged that in her interview yesterday (Tuesday), but now when I look back, do you talk yourself into more tiredness? On one hand, it’s good to acknowledge it but on the other hand, if you’re going to go out there on the match court, you’ve got to be prepared to leave it all out there. That willingness just didn’t seem evident."
The event being a WTA 1000 event certainly swayed Raducanu towards playing, but for Keothavong, it made more sense to skip it because, according to her, the British player clearly wasn't ready to play in the Spanish capital.
"But when you see a player perform like that, you kind of question, ‘OK, maybe physically I wasn’t ready for it, mentally I wasn’t engaged and actually I probably could have done with the week off.’"
"Maybe in hindsight it would have been better to take this week off and go to play qualifying in Rome [the Italian Open starts next week]."
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