Emma Raducanu has opened up about a terrifying stalking incident that left her in tears and struggling to continue her match at the Dubai Open last month. The 22-year-old British tennis star revealed she \u201ccouldn\u2019t see the ball through tears\u201d and could \u201cbarely breathe\u201d after spotting a \u201cfixated\u201d man who had previously approached her twice before appearing courtside during her second-round match against Karolina Muchova.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Raducanu described the distressing moment, saying, \u201cI was obviously very distraught. I saw him in the first game of the match and I was like, I don\u2019t know how I\u2019m going to finish. I literally couldn\u2019t see the ball through tears. I could barely breathe. I was like, I need to just take a breather here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The stalker\u2019s presence in the stands early in the first set left Raducanu visibly shaken. Despite regrouping after the man was removed from the arena, she went on to lose the match 7-6, 6-4. Though she opted not to press charges, the individual has been banned from attending future tournaments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking ahead of her return to competition at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Raducanu reflected on the emotional toll of the ordeal. \u201cIt was a very emotional time,\u201d she admitted. \u201cAfter the match, I did break down in tears, but not necessarily because I lost. There was just so much emotion in the last few weeks of the events happening, and I just needed that week off to take a breather and come here. I feel a lot better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Raducanu is set to face Japan\u2019s Moyuka Uchijima in the first round in California. If she advances, she will meet third seed Coco Gauff in the second round, as the tournament\u2019s top 32 players have received byes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Emma Raducanu has opened up about a terrifying stalking incident that left her in tears and struggling to continue her match at the Dubai Open last month. The 22-year-old British tennis star revealed she \u201ccouldn\u2019t see the ball through tears\u201d and could \u201cbarely breathe\u201d after spotting a \u201cfixated\u201d man who had previously approached her twice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5892,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-5"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5881"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5893,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5881\/revisions\/5893"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}