Emma Raducanu Indian Wells Interview

Emma, welcome to Indian Wells. How are you feeling being here in Tennis Paradise? I love it here in Tennis Paradise. It's one of the nicest tournaments for us. All of the players say it's up there with their favourites. I feel a similar way, I think. It's just such a nice venue and place to play a tournament. I feel very fortunate to be here. We were watching you out there on the practice courts earlier. It's great to see you back and obviously your fans are happy to see you too. But you look to be really enjoying yourself as well back on the tour. Yes, I'm enjoying it. I think that I've got a really good set-up around me right now. I'm just very much enjoying the work. When I can, I try and interact as much as possible. It was great to see the fans on the side of the court earlier. Even if it was just a practice, the turnout was so good. I think that's another great thing about playing here. They must have appreciated it. Let's just look back at the last 18 months. Obviously, you're having a great time here now. It must have been a tough time for you, having reached such a peak at the US Open and then having to almost start from scratch again. Can you describe what that's been like, knowing you can reach those heights but having to work from the bottom again? Yes, I think, to be honest, where I'm at right now, I wouldn't say is the bottom. I think there are further places down to go. I think that it has definitely been an experience. I've learnt a lot from trying to climb my way back up. I think the biggest thing is just putting the work in consistently, day in, day out, as much as I can. How have you picked yourself up when you've had injury setbacks again and felt you were getting back on track and then something else has happened? What do you say to yourself in those moments? I'm just doing what I can on each day. I think at the end of the day, if I can look back and say, yes, I got something out of today and do that every single day, it's easier to set those short-term sights and goals. Otherwise, things can seem quite daunting if you look too far ahead. But in the immediate future, just taking care of the day I think helps and then accumulating as many of those as possible. It's frustrating, of course, to get tonsillitis recently. How did you work your way back to that and what was your goal coming out of that? I had an amazing couple of weeks training in London. I was feeling very, very good about my tennis, about my game. I landed and I got a viral infection in Austin, so I felt very sick. It was probably the worst I've ever felt, sickness-wise. To recover took a while, but now I'm feeling okay. You've got three matches under your belt this year. Compared to the rest of your peers, you're lacking quite a bit of match practice. How has your preparation been off the courts? Obviously, you haven't had the match practice, but what else have you been doing apart from that? Like I said, I think that I had two really good weeks of training in London after Australian Open. Then I unfortunately got an infection a few weeks ago, so I haven't, to be honest, prepared much at all for this tournament. But I think that it's going to be a good challenge and one that I'm up for. Of course, you've got that wild card for Miami as well, which is great news. Do you think that it might be more beneficial to come through qualifying and get that match practice under your belt? Or are you happy to do a bit less and have that wild card into the main draw? I think it depends. I think qualifying is very beneficial. I qualified and won the US Open, so it is good. I think a lot of players are qualifying and winning the tournaments now. It helps work your way into the tournament. I'm very grateful to have received the wild card to Miami Open. I think in this scenario I would take it, but definitely qualifying isn't a negative thing.