Emma Raducanu’s Andy Murray decision: a tennis battle between logic and emotion

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At the heart of the row over Emma Raducanu’s decision to call off her Wimbledon mixed doubles date with Andy Murray is an irresistible three-way tug-of-war between emotion, rationality and karma that could only unfold in tennis.

After Raducanu confirmed via a statement from the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) that she would withdraw from the first round match scheduled for Saturday evening, Murray’s mother and first-ever coach, Judy, made sure she was the leader of the emotional tugboat. of all this with 11 taps of the keys on social media. She described Raducanu’s decision to break off the engagement to her son at No 1 Court, ending his glittering Wimbledon career at the age of 37, as “astonishing”.

Raducanu, who is in her best form at a Grand Slam tournament since winning the 2021 US Open, said she woke up with stiffness in her wrist and did not want to risk further injury ahead of her fourth-round match against Lulu Sun. a 23-year-old qualifier from New Zealand. They play this afternoon, Sunday, on Center Court.

The decision came just days after Raducanu said he needed just seconds to accept Murray’s invitation to work here. About how she’d watched him play at the 2012 Wimbledon Olympics with Laura Robson, winning silver medals, and dreamed that one day she might be able to work with him.

Murray’s camp insisted on Saturday that he was ready to play and that there was no problem with his recently operated back, which prevented him from playing in men’s singles at his final Wimbledon.

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On the one hand, it’s easy to understand Judy Murray’s emotional response to Raducanu’s decision. Her son had offered Raducanu, who has struggled with injuries and questions about her commitment to the sport over the past two years, an opportunity to share some of the ethereal light from his career.

His invitation was also a warning to a British sporting public that has lost patience with Raducanu’s trajectory. Their frustration stems to some extent from false perceptions. Injuries – which required surgeries on both wrists, the site of her current condition, last summer – have derailed her career for more than a year; Winning a US Open title at the age of 18 as a qualifier is both anomalous and remarkable.

Raducanu hasn’t yet been able to prove that she can be just a normal tennis player, and a very good one at that, because she hasn’t really had the chance to do so yet, and given how prone she seems to injuries, she’s probably one of the those players who may need to do a lot of training work outside of tournaments to stay as healthy as possible and reach her full potential.

Judy Murray attended her son’s farewell match on Center Court earlier this week (Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)

The irony of all this is that when Murray was Raducanu’s age, he didn’t have the best reputation either.

In his case, much of the tennis-watching population had a side view of his often grumpy attitude on the court. It was not how an emerging force in the men’s game should have behaved in the era of Roger Federer, the greatest gentleman of them all – once he figured out how to stop racket breaking.

That Judy Murray added a little fuel to the fire that Raducanu had worked hard to extinguish suggested a unique view on the priorities of the next two weeks, namely winning titles rather than providing a stage for farewell celebrations .

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The best way for Raducanu to prove her potential would be a deep run at Wimbledon after the toughest period of her career.

Tiring himself into possible defeat for the sake of a sporting event that is largely meaningless in the grand scheme of that career wouldn’t be a good way to do that.

Anyone devising a rational plan to best prepare Raducanu for a match on Sunday wouldn’t put her on a tennis court too late the day before for a match that, while emotional, would probably also have had the feel of an exhibition . They placed her on a bench, perhaps with an ice pack on her stiff wrist, instead of a racket in her hand.

Playing a symbolic match with Murray in the evening in front of more than 12,000 screaming fans is a good way to get a good night’s sleep and get a body full of adrenaline until the wee hours of the morning, if you take into account post-match treatment, eat, go to bed and rest.

Raducanu is looking to regain her consistency after a difficult time with injuries (John Walton/PA Images via Getty Images)

That’s not a rational plan for success at your best performance at a Grand Slam tournament, considering you won one almost three years earlier.

But tennis is not a rational sport; it’s an emotional sport, filled with unique etiquette codes that players are often reluctant to mess with for fear of angering the sport’s karma gods. Blasting the greatest tennis legend in your country’s tennis history at his last Wimbledon, during a week that was basically dedicated to celebrating him, while you’re only in singles thanks to a wild card, seems like a good way to get rid of them to make angry. – or at least Judy Murray, which has never been good etiquette.

To walk onto a court with that legend is the essence of good Wimbledon karma, and maybe pick up a few tips on what it takes to win at this venue. That seems like a good way to get the mystical powers of the game on your side.

Raducanu has made a decision that she believes is right and best for her tennis at Wimbledon this year.

Do those karma gods really exist? Maybe only if you believe they do.

(Top photo: Mike Egerton/PA Images via Getty Images)