IAN HERBERT: Cut Emma Raducanu some slack! The weight of expectation is tough to handle

The big build-up was well intended, but you winced for Emma Raducanu as she warmed up for her first grass-court match of the summer.

The Nottingham Open court announcer listed her feats and declared he would have sent anyone predicting them a year ago for ‘some sort of assessment of their grasp on reality’ before adding that this had sent ‘expectations sky high, perhaps impossibly high’.

The teenager in question was simply trying to hit tennis balls with Viktorija Golubic ahead of embarking on a summer in the white heat of domestic scrutiny.

To observe the 19-year-old at close quarters is to appreciate what the immaculate social-media profile and blue-chip companies’ desperation for a piece of her do not reveal — that she is barely more than a girl. 

She speaks off the cuff, with candour and without the pre-calculation and self-regard that we are so accustomed to in elite sport, because this is a world she barely knows.

She had never hit a ball in a WTA event when she played at Nottingham last summer. She had just done her A-Levels at the time. 

As her attempt to build something lasting and tangible out of her US Open triumph hit another hole in the road on Tuesday, it was hard to avoid the feeling that she needs the constancy of a permanent coach to help her along the way.

But what she needs most of all is some understanding. Because behind that articulacy and obvious intelligence, we are witnessing a player still living through growing pains.

Her winter — when she would have expected to continue putting her game together — has been blighted by Covid and a series of injuries which have never given her the chance to get started. 

She always had more than her share of injuries in her youth. Any notion that increased time in the gym can make her physically immune just does not stack up.

It was revealing to hear Raducanu say, when asked if she felt her big Open win had come too early, that she felt she was doing everything ‘backwards’.

She has never lost in a final, a quarter-final or a semi-final. She has never played on Centre Court and has never won a minor tour tournament. She’s barely started.

Before she embarked on her uncomfortable 35 minutes against Golubic, we saw the Nottingham tournament’s top seed and world No 5, Greece’s Maria Sakkari. 

Physically and mentally, she looked on a different level to Raducanu as she powered past Colombian Camila Osorio.

If Raducanu does make it to Wimbledon, we need little imagination to know what her appearance there will look like. She can expect a number of teatime Centre Court games for the optimal BBC audience. It’s hard to put the brake on the life she has come to know now.

As a world top-20 player and with the Russians absent, she will be expected to progress past opponents deemed less challenging.

But if it’s humanly possible, we can help her by downgrading expectations in a way that the court announcer did not.