Again, though, it appears that Raducanu’s propensity for picking up niggles is restricting her progress. We already saw something similar happen this season when she reached the final of Cluj-Napoca in early February, only to contract a virus which wiped out almost the entirety of her clay-court season.
Although Raducanu wore strapping on her right thigh during certain parts of her Queen’s run, and told interviewers that “I have just been dealing with a few niggles over the past few weeks”, it seemed as though the two weeks between that tournament and Wimbledon should give her the necessary time to recover.
This is an important stage of the season for Raducanu, whose former coach Mark Petchey told Sky Sports on Thursday that grass is comfortably her best surface. In the same interview, Petchey criticised the people around Raducanu for the way they have guided – or perhaps misguided – her career.
“Everyone knows that things could have been handled differently – but not by her,” Petchey said. “She was 18 [when she won the US Open]. That’s not on her, but there are a lot of adults in the room that clearly will need to look at themselves.
“The lucky thing for her is she won it so young, she had this period to figure stuff out, and she’s now just 23 and has still got a lot of runway ahead in tennis if she decides to use it. Especially on the grass, because there’s no question in my mind this is her best surface.”