The behind-the-scenes secrets that set Emma Raducanu on the road to tennis superstardom
Every child has three main influences in their life: their family, schooling and friends. For Emma Raducanu, the new superstar of British tennis, all three have proved crucial in making her the person she is today.
The 18-year-old, who will today play in the quarter finals of the US Open, has become the first woman to reach at least the fourth round of her first two Grand Slams since Jennifer Capriati in 1990. It’s an outstanding achievement for a teenager who only left school, having completed her A-levels, a few short months ago.
Raducanu is the only child of a Romanian father and Chinese mother, Ian and Renee, both of whom are financial executives. Born in Toronto, she moved with her family to Bromley, in south-east London, when she was two. She grew up idolising a woman from each of her parents’ home countries: Simona Halep and Li Na, who have won two Grand Slam tournaments apiece.
The teenager tries to see her grandmother, Mamiya, who lives in central Bucharest, as much as she can. “I go back a couple times a year, stay with her. I love the food, to be honest… And my grandma’s cooking is also something special,” she said.
But perhaps the greatest gift Emma’s parents have given her is the support to be herself, rather than something they’ve pushed her to be.
As the biographer of several sporting figures, I have seen how Mum and Dad can be the driving force, for good or ill, behind so many young stars in Raducanu’s mould. It’s easy, especially with an only child, to pour too much into them rather than too little. Tennis in particular is no stranger to nightmare parents – just ask Andre Agassi, Steffi Graf or Mary Pierce – but the problem runs across many sports. You only have to stand on the touchline of any children’s football match to find parents putting an unhealthy amount of pressure on their offspring to win.
Neither Ian nor Renee Raducanu are like that. They have always been careful to ensure that tennis is only one part of their daughter’s life, and encouraged her to try many different sports: ballet, swimming, horse riding, golf, skiing, even go-karting and motocross. This had obvious physical benefits: dexterity, balance and swift decision-making are transferable skills. The variety also helped keep young Raducanu mentally fresh and stopped her from burning out; tennis is littered with the names of kids who were exposed to too much intensity too soon and walked away.
Most of all, Ian and Renee have always insisted on the value of the second pillar of their daughter’s achievements: education. Professional sport is one of the most ruthless meritocracies there is, and for every child who makes it, another thousand fail. Every parent of a talented child has to balance optimism with realistic appraisal, and leaving any youngster without a safety net is potentially dangerous. Raducanu’s net has always been her education.
The selective girls’ grammar school she recently left, Newstead Wood in Orpington, says it encourages students to be self-motivated. Its ethos is one where everyone knuckles down because they want to, rather than because they’re forced to. Perhaps unsurprisingly it boasts an impressive list of alumnae, including sprint world champion Dina Asher-Smith, actress Gemma Chan and space expert Libby Jackson.
Its headmaster, Alan Blount, calls Raducanu “an all-round great person. Everything she does she approaches with determination, with hard work, with effort and she gives it 100 per cent.”
Her exam results demonstrated the extent to which that paid off: three 9s and four 8s in her GCSEs, followed by an A* in maths A-level and an A in economics. In fact, Raducanu describes doing her most recent exams as “a bit of an escape for me, to have another thing going alongside my tennis. It’s actually helped me with my on-court career as I can absorb a lot of information. On court I’m more tactically astute than some others. I think everyone has their strengths in their game and one of mine is being mentally quite sharp.”
And to think that most teenagers would probably see sport as an escape from their schoolwork.
It’s easy for budding superstars to feel out of whack with their peers, but Raducanu’s friends appear devoted and supportive. Blount speaks of how she was “humble in that she [was] out performing in these tournaments and then [she’d] come back and be sat alongside her peers again ... and you just wouldn’t know that maybe last week she was in France. She was both popular and hardworking. She was one of everyone else. Her friends were 100 per cent behind her. The most endearing thing about Emma is that what you see on the telly – the smile, the warmth, how she speaks after her matches and the enjoyment – are all her being genuine.” Her former maths teacher Sarah Sword concurs: “She’s simply lovely.”
This, perhaps, is the crux of it all: that no matter how influential someone’s parents, or school, or friends, in the final analysis that person still has to be true to themselves. This genuineness is what people respond to in Raducanu: not just what she does but the way she does it. She’s not an automaton churning out victories with minimum charm. She smiles when she plays. She’s not afraid to be vulnerable. The breathing difficulties which forced her to withdraw against Ajla Tomljanovic at Wimbledon this summer were at least partly brought on by her reaction to the sudden overwhelming pressure of being in the public eye. Typically, she apologised to her opponent the next day for not playing the game to its end.
There are those who suggest that she has taken up mindfulness in the wake of that disappointment. “I was really trying to enjoy the moment ... I just really wanted to be in the present and take it all in,” she said after defeating American Shelby Rogers in her Arthur Ashe Stadium debut on Monday. The technique has been credited with helping her fellow Brits Johanna Konta and Liam Broady.
Her Instagram feed is joyful: funny, unaffected and clearly written in her teenage hand rather than by a team of PR professionals. Pictures taken on court and in the changing room with her team are interspersed with shots in London parks with captions such as “summer’s over”.
Perhaps this is contributing to her confidence with the media and with the crowds who are increasingly excited to see her play. This week, at Flushing Meadows, she has been seen posing for numerous selfies with young fans – many of which will end up on their own social media.
And while most of her own Instagram content is tennis-related, how many other sportspeople would have posted about their excitement at seeing the Golden Gate Bridge because they’d been so impressed at learning about its engineering in school, and included pictures of its designer Joseph Strauss and blueprints of the original design?
Professional sport is a brutal place, but even by those standards, singles tennis is something else. It tests skill, fitness and mental strength like few other disciplines: there is no hiding place on a tennis court. But Raducanu’s former coach Nigel Sears (father of Andy Murray’s wife, Kim) has no doubt she has the chops for it. “Quite frankly, I think the sky’s the limit. It’s really up to her how far she goes,” he has said.
Radio 5 presenter Hugh Ferris also points to how quickly she has become so popular with tennis fans seeking their next champion, especially with Andy Murray’s injury struggles and Johanna Konta missing Wimbledon with Covid. “Every so often, you do get an athlete that strikes a chord with the British public at large,” he said. “She is extraordinary.”
There will doubtless come a time in her career when things don’t go as well for Raducanu as they are now, when she’s no longer the new kid on the block with the world at her feet. She may well not make it to the semi-finals of this US Open. But she seems more than equipped to deal with that time, for her perspective is broader than anything that can be bounded by tramlines and bisected by a net. That, above everything else, is why she’s a superstar in waiting.
Boris Starling has ghostwritten the autobiographies of British and Irish Lions captain Sam Warburton, Springbok World Cup-winning skipper Siya Kolisi, and three-time champion jockey Frankie Dettori.
Additional reporting by Yolanthe Fawehinmi
