Auckland was where Emma Raducanu‘s problems began at the start of last season when she made a tearful exit from the tournament.
On her first trip to New Zealand to play the ASB Classic, Raducanu had rolled her ankle horribly in her second-round match against Viktória Hrunčáková and left the court in tears, nearly jeopardizing her hopes of playing the Australian Open.
Although the tournament is primarily held on outdoor hard courts, the 2023 edition of the ASB Classic was hit with inclement weather for multiple days, leaving tournament organizers with no option but to schedule the matches indoors to meet the weekend deadline for the event’s end date.
The move had a detrimental impact on Raducnau’s body, who blamed the slick and slippery surface as the cause of her apparent slip. Deflated and disappointed, the 21-year-old never quite recovered from that fall until a minor operation was required to repair the damage.
“I’ve put in a lot of physical work in the last few months, and I’ve been feeling good and optimistic. So, to be stopped by a freak injury, rolling an ankle is pretty disappointing in the first week as well. I thought I was playing some pretty decent tennis.”
“The courts are incredibly slick, very slippery, so it’s not a surprise that this happened to someone. It’s out of my control and after a very long day of waiting around. But we’ll assess over the next few days and see what the next steps are.”
In May, on the same day she had double surgery on her wrists, Raducanu was also operated on her ankle and did not play again for the remainder of the 2023 season. Despite her forthright admission to the playing surface tournament, director Nicolas Lamperin sympathized with Raducanu.
However, Lamperin asserted that the makeshift courts were checked to confirm that they met the performance standards and had been redone at the start of the year. Ironically, Raducanu’s comeback will be in Auckland at the start of 2024.
It’s a bold move by Raducanu and even slightly surprising that the tournament she so openly berated in her post-match press conference in January offered her a wild card to play next month as a token of sympathy for the root of her problem.
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