Emma Raducanu held a truly bizarre press conference at the 2023 Madrid Open and it's been making headlines.
Players, like any human beings, also have their moods and days when they are not really talkative, and that's understandable. The 2021 US Open champion, Emma Raducanu, had one of those days on Tuesday ahead of the 2023 Madrid Open when she talked to the press.
Ahead of the WTA 1000 tournament, which is played in the Spanish capital, the young Brit talked to the press as she was coming to Madrid after previously losing in Stuttgart, and in an attempt to defend some of her last year's ranking points earned at the event.
But Raducanu wasn't really in the mood to answer questions. That resulted in a press conference in which she spoke only 58 words as an answer to 16 questions and ended in around three minutes. Maybe it was a message from the former world no. 10 that she would let her tennis do the talking.
However, many fans were still interested how could such a press conference look like. Therefore, we made it possible for you to read it below, fully transcribed.
Q: Hi Emma. How's it going?
E: Good, how are you?
Q: Fine, thanks. How is your physical state this week?
E: It's OK.
Q: Wrists?
E: It's OK.
Q: Have you been doing anything different with them?
E: No.
Q: When you say OK, Emma, do you mean, like, everything is hunky-dory or?
E: We're managing it.
Q: You're managing it, so it's kind of still there?
E: Yeah, OK.
Q: But bubbling under ... obviously we weren't in Stuttgart, watched some of the match on TV, but was it a factor in that? Or was Jelena Ostapenko, she does have days when she blows hot, it did look like one of those days when she has the bit between her teeth.
E: She played very well.
Q: Was that determining factor of the match?
E: I think she played a great match.
Q: So, where are you at the moment? Do you feel... We were in Miami, it was close... if you had won those break points in the first game of the third set, I think you might have won, so that was presumably quite encouraging after Indian Wells?
E: Yeah it was a good trip in America, tough match. But yeah, moving on.
Q: What do you think about your draw here?
E: It is what it is.
Q: I guess it's possible that you could play Jodie Burrage if she won today. She's one of your friends, isn't she?
E: Yeah.
Q: So is it nice to see her kind of on the up?
E: Yeah, of course.
Q: Do you want to say anything about Jodie, as we are trying to manage an interview here?
E: Yeah, I like her.
Q: You like Jodie?
E: Yeah, good player.
Q: Anything about her climb up the rankings?
E: It's great.
Q: You're not making this very easy. Is this deliberate, that you don't want to make this too easy for us?
E: No.