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By the time Emma Raducanu sat down for a Q&A session with an excited group of ball kids at the DubaiTennis Championships this week, she was already three weeks and four countries into a terrifying ordeal. You would not have known it.
As Raducanu sat smiling and cross-legged, she sportingly fielded questions about whether she had ever been a ball girl (no), which player from the past she would most like to have played against (Ashleigh Barty), and what advice she would offer aspiring tennis players (work hard daily).
So far, so good for a woman who, even at the age of 22, has long since become a past master in the art of answering tricky queries. But children can be the toughest inquisitors and, accustomed though she may be to dealing with packed press rooms at the world’s biggest tournaments, the final question momentarily floored her.
Who’s my celebrity crush?’ repeated Raducanu, laughing a little self-consciously as she adjusted her top. ‘I’m focused on myself right now. I don’t have time for any crushes.’
Raducanu’s young questioner could hardly have known it, but his inquiry was closer to home than anyone present could have imagined at the time.
There are many shades of infatuation, and by all accounts the man who was given a restraining order this week in Dubai after following the former US Open champion from south-east Asia to the Persian Gulf was probably at the darker end of the scale.
Crushes were probably the last thing Raducanu wanted to consider, yet she handled the question no less deftly and good-naturedly than she would later deal with the man who displayed ‘fixated behaviour’ towards her, against whom she dropped all charges once he signed a restraining order.
The revelation of character is a central tenet of any sport, and tennis more than most. Yet no athlete should have to draw on their mental strength simply to go about their daily business. Given the details that have emerged about what Raducanu went through in the weeks leading up to her appearance in Dubai, it would perhaps behove her many critics to re-evaluate their views about her perceived shortcomings.
The distressing scenes that unfolded early in her second-round match against Karolina Muchova, when she became visibly distressed after spotting her ‘stalker’ in the stands, were weeks in the making.
This man followed her to Singapore, to Abu Dhabi, where I was with her, again in Doha, now in Dubai, and we noticed him,’ said her former Roman Kelecic, who has been working with Raducanu recently.
‘Initially, we thought he was a fan, an admirer, because Emma is a really big tennis star with a huge fan base. Until he got physically close to her, started having contact in the form of selfies, hugging”
It was nonetheless not until Monday, when the man came up to Raducanu in a tournament restaurant, that it became apparent just how closely he had been watching the former British No 1.
‘That was the only moment in a month where I, the fitness coach, the security guard who was with us, was not with her at that moment,’ Kelecic told the Croatian outlet Net.
‘So that man was assessing the situation and looking for the best moment to get closer to her. He had a strategy that was terrifying, he thought everything through, calculated it.
‘It’s terrifying how much he, in essence, thought about it all and planned it. His strategy worked, and it was to get closer to her. That evening, we reported it immediately and again in the morning, when she was playing the match, because her safety is the most important thing to us.’
