Emma Raducanu insists she’s ‘learned how to say no’ after wave of sponsorship deals that followed her US Open success – and claims she’s now ‘putting myself first’

Emma Raducanu is enjoying the crisp evenings and sparkling city streets while she can. 

‘December in London is my favourite time of the year,’ says the 22-year-old, but on Friday she will swap baubles for barbies as she flies to New Zealand to begin preparations for the Australian Open.

‘I’ll be in Auckland’, says Raducanu of her Christmas Day plans. ‘My best friend lives there so the last two years I’ve been with her and her family. She has a little beach hut so it’s a hot Christmas with a barbecue on the beach – it’s different!’

Whatever the temperature, the festive season is a time for reflection and Raducanu has been reflecting on some lessons learned in a career like no other.

She has invited us to the National Tennis Centre to talk about her body and her mind: why injury problems have led her to appoint Japanese fitness trainer Yutaka Nakamura; finding new motivation after achieving a lifetime ambition; and how she has learned to say no to some of the sponsorship demands which broke upon her like a tidal wave after the 2021 US Open victory.

To begin with that final point: Tiffany, Dior, Vodaphone, BA, Evian and Porsche came calling following that fairytale of New York and Raducanu acknowledges it has taken her time to strike a balance with her day job.

‘I’m very grateful and fortunate to have had certain experiences and opportunities but I wasn’t prepared for it,’ says Raducanu.

‘In my head it was like, “I wake up, I play tennis, I go to the gym and I go home. I don’t have anything else to do”. But especially straight after I did really well, for the next few years there was so much communication about things off the court. 

‘I would always give 100 per cent on the court, I was always working really hard but I wasn’t prepared for the other things that inevitably take some energy out of you.’

Asked how she has learned to cope with the demands, she replies: ‘Now I’m a lot more structured. I’ll be like, “OK, I have this one hour when we will talk about business and now I’m going to go train for the rest of the week”. 

‘Also, I’ve learned how to say no a bit more. Initially I felt really bad for letting people down. I’d always want to do extra for whatever partner or magazine I’m shooting for. If they wanted to do another half day I would do it and fit it in around my schedule.

‘I’m always going to do my best for the brands I’m working with but I’m also putting myself first a little bit more.’

It all adds to the sense that Raducanu is still in the process of ‘recovering’ from winning a Grand Slam. That seems strange to say but such a monumental victory so early in a career can destabilise the natural progression of a tennis player – in which level of play, physicality and media attention grow alongside each other.

The US Open catapulted Raducanu into the top 10 in the world and with that came a list of mandatory WTA events. It is little wonder that a body which had been so recently bent over the A Level textbooks broke down.

Now with the addition of Nakamura, who helped Maria Sharapova and Naomi Osaka to Grand Slam titles, Raducanu is assembling a team which looks properly equipped for the rigours of the tour.

‘I want to play more than I did this year,’ says Raducanu of a season in which she competed in fewer events – 14 – than all but two other players in the top 100. ‘Now with my setup, I don’t need to come back (to London) to continue good physical work. I can do it every day on the road, like microdoses.

‘After Korea (where a foot injury in September put her out for two months) I had some time to think. I was really creative. I was playing the piano, I was painting, exploring my artistic side. It was a turning point where I was just like, I really want to stay healthy next year. I want to make sure I’m consistently doing the physical stuff because every time I went on a trip this year, the fitness would take a back seat. I’d have press, tennis, whatever, and then the fitness, because I didn’t have someone able to adapt the session, it would just not be done.

‘That’s when I started looking at Yutaka. It was a big moment where I really wanted to spend more time and energy on my fitness.’

Nakamura has already made some tweaks to training. ‘I’m doing lighter weights,’ says Raducanu. ‘More movements and long ranges, because I’m very flexible so I need to be strong in those end-ranges – I think a lot of the niggles I’ve had are because I’m too loose and I get into these positions that I’m not able to control yet.’

The 52-year-old Nakamura joins a coaching team led by the now-familiar figure of Nick Cavaday. Appointed at the start of this year, he has provided stability after Raducanu went through five coaches in the first three years of her career.

‘It has never been my philosophy to chop and change coaches,’ insists Raducanu. ‘I’ve never wanted that. I’m a very loyal person, whether that’s with my tennis or off the court. In the past, unfortunately, it hasn’t always worked like this but that is my intention and whether things happen that way is not necessarily something I can predict or control.’

Fully fit and with a strong team in place, at a decent base-camp ranking of 57, this feels like the strongest position from which Raducanu has started a season. She should be well-placed to push into the world’s top 50 and beyond – but how is one to find motivation in that relatively modest goal when a lifetime’s ambition has already been achieved?

‘This is something that has changed,’ says Raducanu, when asked what drives her. ‘When I started, my main reason was, “I play tennis because I want to win a Grand Slam”. And when that happens so young, I’m so grateful for it but I’m like, “Well, what now? I want to win another Grand Slam”. It’s just not sustainable. Because when you don’t win another Grand Slam straightaway, you get frustrated.’

It is as if the unreasonable expectations of the British public have been mirrored in Raducanu’s own psyche. After the US Open we all got swept along and when further deep runs at majors did not arrive some became frustrated and many, especially the imps and goblins of social media, began tearing down what they saw as a false idol.

The reality is that through a concatenation of circumstances – primarily her brilliant play – Raducanu won a major way ahead of schedule. She is far from the finished product but her talent is formidable and progress is being made.

‘Now, the reason I play is genuinely that I really enjoy what I’m doing, how I’m working, the people I’m working with,’ says Raducanu. ‘I don’t have a goal to be this ranking, to win this match. As athletes we all want to win but that’s not the primary objective. It’s more about enjoying what I am doing, collecting these good days of work. Seeing how far it can go: how fast I can be. How fit. How explosive. How well I can move.

‘I just want to see how good I can be.’