58 phrases. 16 questions. Three minutes. And one disastrous press convention.
Struggling tennis star Emma Raducanu has been concerned in an extremely icy interview forward of the Madrid Open.
Facing the prospect of falling outdoors the highest 100 ranked gamers, simply 18 months since she stormed the US Open to win a grand slam on the age of 18, Raducanu seems to be feeling the stress.
She dropped right down to No. 85 within the WTA rankings following her first-round exit in opposition to Jelena Ostapenko in Stuttgart final week.
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It set the scene for a mortifying alternate with journalists earlier than her marketing campaign begins in Madrid.
According to stories, a media officer from the WTA Tour stepped in to chop the interview after lower than three minutes.
It was a trainwreck from the start with Raducanu responding with temporary solutions from the very begin.
One journalist ultimately challenged Raducanu to elucidate why she was giving such snarky responses.
Her one-worded response is when the media official jumped in to chop the alternate.
The event’s press convention transcript exhibits one reporter requested: “You’re not making this very easy. Is this deliberate that you don’t want to make this too easy for us?”.
She responded: “No”.
The media-minder then lower in to say: “I think let’s just leave it there”.
Veteran tennis journalist Mike Dickson was amongst these concerned within the awkward interview.
“A couple of us attempted an interview with Emma Raducanu ahead of her opener tomorrow night at the Madrid Open. It didn’t go very well,” he posted on Twitter.
The Telegraph’s Simon Briggs posted on Twitter Raducanu was “showing the strain” of the stress she is below to cease her rankings nostril dive.
Raducanu is predicted to drop to No. 101 on the planet after Madrid — until she is ready to defend the factors she picked up in her fourth-round look 12 months in the past.
If capable of win her first spherical match, Raducanu will play world No. 1 Iga Swiatek within the second spherical.
It is one thing that would depart her needing a wild card to play at Wimbledon.
Raducanu is on a three-match dropping streak and is displaying no signal of pulling out of her kind hunch earlier than the French Open begins on May 28.
Source: www.news.com.au
