Wimbledon gets off on wrong foot as both Raducanu and Draper withdraw

Court One ticket holders who had been off-grid for the past 12 hours may well have been surprised when they sat down for their first match of the day. Instead of the expected arrival of Emma Raducanu, out came world number 148 Harriet Dart to face Jelena Ostapenko. 

Dart had been elevated to a show court as a result of Raducanu’s announcement last night that she was withdrawing from Wimbledon. In a post on Instagram at around 22:00 last night, Raducanu said that “the niggle [she had] been managing has developed into a stress fracture”. 

The announcement was not a complete surprise. Raducanu had been spotted wearing a boot on Wednesday whilst her scheduled practice session was cancelled on Thursday. She was nowhere to be seen on Friday, and without wanting to sound too much like a Craig David song, by Saturday, she failed to win a game in a practice set against Anna Kalinskaya that she cut short.

Despite all this, she told journalists in her pre-tournament press conference, just seven hours before her post, that “the plan right now is to play”. 

This kind of press conference vs reality switcheroo was not Raducanu’s first rodeo. Earlier this year in Rome, prior to the Italian Open, she left only half an hour between speaking to the press and pulling out, on that occasion due to post-viral illness. 

It also appears to be a contagious phenomenon, at least for British tennis players. Whilst Dart and Ostapenko were going head to head in Raducanu’s vacated slot, Jack Draper announced he was withdrawing too. Draper at least had the good grace to leave the best part of a day between his press conference and announcement.

Draper had given no indication that anything was wrong when he spoke to the media, stating in his announcement that he had had a recurrence of the arm injury that has plagued him for the past year. The 24-year-old had reached the semi-finals at Eastbourne last week in what were his first wins since March. 

It was hard to see either Raducanu or Draper as serious contenders to even make it through the first week, let alone the whole fortnight, but their absence at the tournament is still a significant blow as the most high profile British players. Draper’s first round tie against Taylor Fritz was expected to be the pick of the opening selection of games given Draper’s superior head-to-head record and pre-injury high ranking. There was also disappointment for the one British seed in the draw as Cameron Norrie lost in five sets to American qualifier Michael Zheng.

Raducanu has looked for a long while like her body is simply not up to the demands of a professional tennis tour. For every step forward in her game, like reaching the final at Queen’s a handful of weeks ago, there is an immediate several steps back. It is easy to scoff at a player whose face is plastered across advertisements all year round, but there can be no-one more frustrated than her. Draper has admitted himself how tough it has been to deal with this long-term injury. It is easy to forget that professional athletes do tend to want to play.

At least for the schedulers, Ostapenko vs Dart made for compelling viewing between two players who are not afraid to show their emotion on court. The 2017 French Open winner cannot help herself from being the pantomime villain. She gave the British crowd some sarcastic applause and a thumbs up after they raucously cheered Dart breaking her to love in the third set. Her performance was met with a smattering of boos.

Last year, Ostapenko could not deal with that intensity from the crowd as she lost in the first round to Sonay Kartal. She was too good for Dart here though, suffering a small scare in the second set to come through 6-3, 3-6, 6-4.

Photograph by Shaun Brooks – CameraSport via Getty