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As the 1980s dawned, the notoriously intrusive British media were getting very excited about a bright young star who captured plenty of headlines.
Teenager Annabel Croft was the darling of the tabloid press as she emerged through the junior ranks impressively and started a rapid rise up the WTA Rankings.
The hype machine started to roll around her and by the time she struck her first balls as a professional, expectations were already at a lofty level.
Croft may have had the talent to go all the way and win Grand Slam titles, but life on the tennis tour proved to be a challenge she did not want to embrace and at the age of 21, she retired as a professional player.
“I just woke up one day and decided ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’ It was as simple as that,” said Croft in an interview with Tennis365.
“Tennis had been my life since I was really young and the only thing I’d ever done was wake up and get into a tracksuit. I needed to put on normal clothes in the mornings and not worry about my tennis.
“I was really unhappy. I wasn’t enjoying tennis at all. I remember my mum saying to me: ‘Your heart’s not in this anymore, is it?’ That was a relief.”
Croft remains a prominent voice in tennis almost 30 years since she called time on her career as a player, with her passion for the sport and excellence as a broadcaster shining through in her numerous TV and radio roles.
Yet she would be the first to confirm that loving tennis and loving being a tennis player are two very different stories.
Life on the road involves long hours in hotel rooms alone, enduring battles with injury problems and the constant pressure to live up to your billing and deliver to an audience that doesn’t care about the problems you may be going through.
With plenty of money in her bank account after her instant tennis success story, life away from tennis may be a whole lot easier for Raducanu, but respected tennis broadcaster Marcus Buckland hopes that is not the end game of this brief and enchanting sporting story.
“I think it’s really tough for her and I hope she doesn’t come to the conclusion that she doesn’t need tennis,” Buckland told Tennis365.
“Of course, if she gave up tennis tomorrow, she has earned enough from the sport not to worry about money and she could pursue other areas she is interested in. She has mentioned a banking career.
