Emma Raducanu has criticised the Australian Open’s “very difficult” scheduling but remains focused on her game after being lined up to compete in a late-night slot on the opening day.
Raducanu will play her first-round match against Mananchaya Sawangkaew on Sunday night, leaving the British No 1 with minimal time to adjust to the conditions at Melbourne Park after competing in Hobart. With the Sunday start, the Australian Open’s first round is now split across three days, so Raducanu’s first match could have been played on Monday.
“It’s very difficult,” she said. “You would love to have more time in the environment, more time practising, but I guess I was pretty much handed the schedule to try and turn it around and make the most out of what is in front of me. I think it’s easy to get down and complain about it, but it’s not going to help. So I’m just trying to focus and turn it around for tomorrow.”
On Thursday, Raducanu lost to the world No 204 Taylah Preston in the quarter-finals of the Hobart International. A delayed flight meant she only arrived in Melbourne late on Friday. She will have just one training session in Melbourne before her first round match.
Coming after a best-of five-sets men’s match, Alexander Bublik against Jenson Brooksby, Raducanu’s match is due to start at a late hour against Sawangkaew, a talented 23-year-old Thai who broke into the top 100 last year. Sawangkaew is ranked No 195 due to a six-month injury layoff last year.
“I think it’s very difficult to be scheduling women’s matches after a potential five-set match,” said Raducanu. “To me, it doesn’t really make as much sense, but I think after seeing it, the initial reaction is probably, like: ‘Oh, it’s a late one.’ Then you deal with it, and you try and shift your day and adjust.
“Today I’m going to practise and see what it’s like. I don’t think I have been in that situation. Only once before maybe when I played the semis of the US Open. I played second night match, but other than that, I haven’t played that late. So for me, it’s a new experience, something that I need to learn to do. Hopefully if I’m playing this game for a long time, I’ll probably be in this situation again, so it’s a good learning step to try and adjust and deal with that day, as well.”
Meanwhile, Novak Djokovic cited the Professional Tennis Players’ Association’s lawsuit against the governing bodies as a significant reason behind his surprise decision to sever ties with the organisation. Djokovic, who co-founded the PTPA alongside the former player Vasek Pospisil, announced at the beginning of the year that he would be stepping away.
“It was a tough call for me to exit the PTPA, but I had to do that, because I felt like my name was overused in pretty much every single article or communication channel,” he said. “I felt like people, whenever they think about PTPA, they think it’s my organisation, which is a wrong idea from the very beginning. So this was supposed to be everyone, every player’s organisation across the board, men and women.
“And I also didn’t like the way the leadership was taking the direction of the PTPA, and so I decided to step out. Does that mean that I’m not supporting PTPA? No, I am. I am still wishing them all the best, because I think that there is room and there is a need for 100% players-only representation existing in our ecosystem.
“Going back to the lawsuit, as well, back in Miami, March last year, it was partly I exited because of that, because I didn’t agree with everything that was in there, and I decided not to be one of the player plaintiffs. So that was also one of the big reasons.”
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