Emma Raducanu

One minute you are riding the crest of a wave gliding effortlessly through to the fourth round of the Wimbledon Championships and the next you have come up against a battle hardened Aussie of Croatian heritage and your world is suddenly falling apart. As the dust settles on Emma Raducanu’s Wimbledon adventure will Monday 5th July 2021 be a springboard to greater glory or the splendid yet all too brief emergence of a mayfly?

Allow me to back track twenty three years, to the 19th July 1998. A young Englishman named Justin Rose has nearly pulled off the impossible by claiming the claret jug as an amateur at the Open Golf Championship played that year at Birkdale. Famously chipping in from fifty yards at the 18th hole for a birdie, he finished tied fourth, two shots shy of the eventual winner Mark O’Meara. The following day he turned Pro and thus embarked on an infamous run, missing the cut in his first twenty one professional events including the European Qualifying School of 1998. A game that had once seemed so easy had suddenly acquired a far harder edge.

Rose and Raducanu are cut from similar cloth. Both in their teens when they burst onto the scene, both middle class, intelligent and engaging with supportive parents. Through grit and determination Rose went on to prove his doubters wrong, twenty nine professional victories - including the US Open and an Olympic Gold Medal - just reward for his efforts.

Raducanu could do a lot worse than giving him a call.

©Mark Brennand