Tennis News: Emma Raducanu's hilarious statement and Dominic Thiem gets real

Emma Raducanu won the US Open in 2021as a teenager, something we are beginning to feel contractually bound to tell you. The reason is because Raducanu is still spoken about quite a bit even that is literally the only title she has ever won. Her career-high ranking is No. 10 on the WTA tour and she is currently ranked 212.

She has missed a lot of time with various injuries. She had surgery on both wrists and an ankle issue as well. She is still only 21 years old, however, so she could have a very good career ahead of her. The question might be asked whether Raducanu is truly as good as she was at the 2021 US Open or if that win was simply a player getting hot at the right time and playing well beyond their normal form.

Raducanu recently got some pushback after she decided to withdraw from French Open qualifying after not receiving a wild card to enter the Grand Slam. The only way Raducanu is going to improve her current form is to play more matches and qualifying would have given her a chance to do that. Instead, she might have come across as if she saw herself as bigger than going through qualifying.

Emma Raducanu's outlandish statement and Dominic Thiem's honesty

Many believe her priorities are not tennis-focused but marketing-focused. That may not be true, of course, but how the general public sees a person matters if that person is trying to sell products to them. In a recent interview with The Times, the Brit said something quite outlandish, however.

Answering a question about her marketing opportunities, Raducanu said, "There are those who see me doing a shoot or posing for a commercial and they don’t see the seven hours before that at the training center, doing physio, gym, hitting balls. But if on a rare evening, I go to a premiere and I get photographed, that’s my downtime...My career in tennis is probably finished in 10 years, so I have got to maximize. It’s a sacrifice worth making."

10 years? Raducanu might not play three more years. While one hopes she will not suffer more injuries, she does not seem motivated enough to play for another decade. Maybe she was half-joking.

Speaking of players who did not receive a wild card into the French Open, Dominic Thiem did choose to try to go through qualifying. This will be his last French Open as he has announced he will be retiring at the end of 2024. Roland Garros could have granted him a wild card simply because of that.

But Thiem did not complain about not given entrance to the French Open as some other players have. Instead, Thiem made an admission about why he did not get the wild card.

Speaking to the media, Thiem gave an honest assessment of not being given a wild card and his words might make one cheer for him even more enthusiastically. Thiem said, "Honestly, I had a lot of time to be in a good ranking. I had enough tournaments and enough time to rise in the ranking and I didn’t, so I didn’t deserve it and that’s okay. I had 10 main draw appearances in the last few years. That’s more than enough."

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