Defeat for Emma was ‘a bump in the road’
Murray tells teenager loss no cause for alarm
Andy Murray knows all too well that nobody makes it to the top of tennis via a smooth trajectory, and he has assured Emma raducanu that there is no cause for alarm after her defeat at Indian Wells.
In fact the 34-year-old Scot, who reached his first uS Open final aged 21, was half-expecting her to have a setback in the wake of her Flushing Meadows triumph.
Murray believes that, from what he has seen, she will be able to survive the undulating journey in front of her.
‘What happened there was obviously incredible but in tennis — and other sports — it doesn’t just go in an upwards direction all the time,’ he said. ‘There are always little bumps and stuff along the way.
‘It’s just a little bump, but I think pretty much everyone was sort of expecting that. I don’t think it’s anything unexpected, to be honest.
‘Look, I don’t know her unbelievably well. I just know from the people that have worked and been around her, they all say the same things.
‘She’s obviously bright, well educated, so you would imagine she would certainly be a lot better equipped to deal with everything that’s going on than most, and deal with it in a more mature way than I would have done when I was 18. I think she’s handled herself perfectly.
‘I’m sure as she moves along she will learn how to go about everything and how to balance the whole tennis life, commercial life and the sort of stuff that goes on away from the court, better all the time.’
as a veteran of Indian Wells, not generally a happy hunting ground even at his peak, he was not surprised that she struggled with the conditions on Friday night.
‘It’s just that the conditions in new
york in comparison to here are very, very different,’ said Murray.
‘Pretty much every ball that you hit in new york was between your waist and your shoulders, the court was quite quick, so it was sort of shooting through and it was like first-strike tennis really.
‘Whereas here, the balls are checking a lot and it is very bouncy. It was windy as well and it really can swirl a bit in that stadium, whereas at Flushing Meadows or Wimbledon, when you’ve got the roofs on the court, you don’t really get the wind in there.’
dan Evans and Cam norrie joined Murray to make it a clean sweep for the British men in their opening matches. Evans and norrie, jousting for the British no1 position, will now face diego Schwartzmann and roberto Bautista agut respectively.
Evans is currently raducanu’s opposite number on the men’s side, but admitted that his position had little in common with hers.
‘I would not know what she’s going through,’ he said. ‘I think I read somewhere that she said it was sort of a good feeling to get that match out of the way — and that’s probably true, isn’t it?
‘She’ll now start getting back to a bit of normality where she can play and get ready for the next tournament.’
Were Evans able to defeat Schwartzmann, he could well enter the world’s top 20 for the first time.