Emma Raducanu surprisingly withdrew from the 2024 Roland Garros and she recently explained why she had opted for that approach.
The British player returned to tennis earlier this year and had some solid results, considering it was her comeback to the WTA Tour. During the clay-court part of the season, there weren’t really any expectations put on her due to her previous struggles with the surface.
To the surprise of many, she played some really strong tennis on clay, but even with all of that, the Brit opted to skip Roland Garros. She simply didn’t think it was worth playing at the event at that very moment, preferring to focus on the grass season.
Grass is certainly a better surface for her than clay, and her results on both surfaces confirm that. Her start so far on the grass has been great, which proves that the decision to skip Roland Garros was certainly the correct one.
Speaking after her most recent match in Nottingham, Raducanu further explained why she decided to skip Roland Garros in favour of an early preparation for the grass season.
“I don’t need to rush and try to win Roland Garros, it wasn’t my goal this year. I had to prioritize where I wanted to aim and it was a good block to do some physical work. I would have liked to spend more time on the grass, although it rained almost every day, so we spent a lot of time on hard courts.”
Now, she’ll have a few weeks to enjoy some tennis on the grass court. After that, the tennis circuit will be back on clay for the Olympics, before it moves to the hard courts again, when Raducanu will return to the US Open, where she triumphed a few years ago.