Lack of support for Emma Raducanu from women’s locker room reveals haunting truth

When Emma Raducanu gave her first interview about her recent stalker ordeal on Tuesday, she rather shrugged aside a question about contact from the tennis locker room.

“A couple of players sent me some messages,” Raducanu explained, “but it’s not something I would necessarily talk about with other players.”

If the response from her peers was a little apathetic, the explanation may lie in the fact that Raducanu’s experience – while undeniably horrible – is not actually that unusual.

As her friend and British team-mate Katie Boulter told reporters this week: “Each tennis player has been through something similar. I’ve had people on site at WTA [tournaments] saying they were going to harm me. It can make you feel quite isolated and I don’t wish that upon anyone.”

Misogyny and death threats

The more you hear about the lives of elite female players, the more you feel amazed – and not in a good way – at the obstacles they face.

Tennis is a tough enough sport on its own, given its fourfold requirements of fine motor skills, elite fitness, strategic decision-making and individual mental fortitude. But then you add in all the extra rubbish that WTA players have to wade through.

Stalkers are high on the list, as is the constant drip-drip of misogyny that flows through unsolicited posts on social media. As Boulter added: “I don’t know whether it’s [because of] online betting, but everyone’s experienced something where they’ve been sent some horrible messages. I actually read one recently. Think it was yesterday, one came out.”

While Boulter did not specifically identify the nature of this message, we can assume that it was a death threat – something that the former US Open champion Sloane Stephens said in 2022 had been “completely normalised”.

Although male players are not exempt from this sort of online sewage, all the evidence from the wider world of sport – including an 85-15 split logged across all abusive posts aimed at Olympians during the 2021 Games in Tokyo – suggests that it is overwhelmingly directed at female athletes.

Asked this week whether he had heard of any stalkers targeting ATP players, British No 1 Jack Draper replied: “No, not particularly. It’s difficult in tennis, because you go to tournaments and people come over and they ask for pictures. And although it’s nice to be very close, we don’t know these people. As a guy, it’s a little bit different. I think it [the Raducanu case] is a good opportunity for the tours, especially the WTA, to look more into their protocols.”

Resuming her season in Indian Wells this week, Raducanu has been granted extra security. On Tuesday, she came into the interview room with a pair of burly bodyguards, and went on to tell reporters that: “It’s amazing to feel protected, to feel safe. I’m very grateful to the tournament for this.”

The man in charge of arrangements at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden is Tommy Haas, the tournament director and former world No 2 who has taken a personal interest in helping Raducanu feel at home. At the weekend, he even picked up a racket and batted a few balls back and forth with her.

Credit: Instagram/BNP Paribas Open

“One of the most important issues for us is to make sure everybody feels safe when they come here,” Haas told reporters on Tuesday. “Particularly with her case, of course it’s on our minds. Now, I wouldn’t go into the details of if we went above and beyond, just for her personally, but I’m glad to hear that she’s feeling great and that all of these measurements are in place.”

Indian Wells is known for being one of the friendliest tournaments of the year, attracting a clientele which – like the population of nearby Palm Springs – is dominated by wealthy retirees. The practice courts are always mobbed by fans, and on Tuesday Raducanu herself mentioned feeling “so much love, even on the player lawn” – a prominent green space at the front of the site where all the players do their warm-ups.

The very openness of the set-up is a challenge for the security guards, who could be heard shouting for fans to move aside promptly whenever a player passed by on Tuesday.

As Haas pointed out, tennis has so far avoided a repeat of its most notorious stalking case, the one involving the crazed Steffi Graf fan who stabbed Monica Seles in the shoulder in Hamburg in 1993. But there is always some small element of risk. Presidential-style security cannot be guaranteed for every player. And even if it could, heavy policing would darken the mood of this frothy summertime sport.

“You want to give the fans something worth seeing and being up close and personal,” Haas explained. “If it’s by the practice courts, if it’s closer to the tennis courts, you make sure that everyone behaves in a certain way. Anything that is not acceptable, you readjust.

“But you know, we are known for a tournament where we have lots of amazing tennis fans, lots of tennis knowledge. I think for the most part, everybody respects that.”

Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.