Tennis pundit on Emma Raducanu: ‘I’d be surprised if she’s still in the Top 20 at the end of the year’

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Emma Raducanu in action on the WTA Tour

The 2022 season is likely to be a challenging one for Emma Raducanu with Pam Shriver predicting that we will only see her true level in 2023.

Raducanu stunned the tennis world in September last year when, at the age of 18, she became the first qualifier – man or woman – to win a Grand Slam as she won 10 matches in a row en route to lifting the US Open title.

She also reached the quarter-final of the Transylvania Open and finished the season at a career-high of No 19, having started the campaign outside the world 300.

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However, there were some disappointments for Raducanu as she lost early at Indian Wells – her first tournament after her Flushing Meadows success – while she finished the year with defeat to the unheralded Wang Xinyu from China in her opening match at the Linz Open.

Tennis commentator Shriver, who won 21 women’s Grand Slam titles during her playing career, warns that the 19-year-old is likely to face a lot of obstacles in 2022.

“I think 2022 is going to continue to be a challenge for her. I think it’s going to be 2023 when we have a clearer idea of what her consistency level is going to be,” she told the official WTA Tour website.

I might be wrong, but it was such a sudden, unnatural step from qualifying to winning a major – never been done before – followed up by all these new business partnerships, recognition and coaching changes.

“The only thing that has remained the same is her name, the sport she plays and her agent. I feel like everything else around her has changed, and when you’re a teenager you’re already going through a lot of changes. I’d be surprised if she’s still in the Top 20 at the end of the year.”

Emma Raducanu Pam Shriver

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