ANALYTICAL BREAK: EMMA RADUCANU'S OFF-COURT STRATEGY WITH NEW COACH
Emma Raducanu opens up on her tough 2025 season, revealing how she overcame stalker-related fears and finds mental peace by promoting her quiet off-season in Bromley.
Emma Raducanu has landed many endorsement deals early in her career. Yet, becoming an ambassador for the London borough of Bromley might be her dream sponsorship.
During a chat with tennis reporters after a tough but rewarding season, Raducanu was just trying to describe her quiet off-season at home when she started promoting Bromley. “I feel so settled here,” she said. “I haven’t been in the UK much this year because of competitions, but spending time with my parents has been great. I’ve loved being in Bromley. It reminds me of being a kid—same bedroom, everything.”
“Bromley now has these great coffee shops that didn’t used to be here. I’ve been trying them all. It’s been fun, with so much green space, and I’ve been taking the train. I’ve been in rush hour every day, which is something. But it’s my way to switch off. As soon as I’m on the train to Waterloo, I feel like my day is done.”
The peace Raducanu talks about comes after a good, if not amazing, season where she moved forward. She climbed from outside the top 60 to number 29 in 2025, her best ranking since 2022. This year, she played more often with fairly steady results.
She’s also worked to stabilise her team, which has been a problem. She seems to be doing well with her coach, Francisco Roig, who used to coach Rafael Nadal. She’ll start the 2026 season with a new physiotherapist and strength coach, Emma Stewart, who has experience in tennis and recently worked with the British Rowing team.
Lately, though, she’s been trying not to think about tennis. After ending her season early in Asia due to illness, she spent time improving her Chinese while visiting family in her mother’s home country and her Spanish at Roig’s suggestion, along with French. “I was trying to do everything,” she said, smiling. “I need rest days from my rest days. It takes a lot.”
As the 2021 US Open champ talked about learning languages, someone from her team joked that she now sends him texts in French, even though he doesn’t speak it. “It’s funny because I start mixing languages,” Raducanu said. “I’ll say a sentence in three different languages and not even know what I’m saying. But it’s been great for me to focus on something else and use my brain. It’s the best thing for me, and I feel pretty good, just trying to improve off the court.”
Besides good results, 2025 had tough times. In February, Raducanu had issues with someone who was fixated on her, which made headlines. These events affected her confidence. She once said her neck hurt from looking down in public to avoid being recognised. “Now it doesn’t. My neck doesn’t hurt as much. I’m not looking down as much. My posture is better,” she said, laughing. “But I think, ‘Are they going to see me on the train?’ It’s not so bad.”
Raducanu’s comfort in the city during the off-season shows she’s moved past the incident. “I’ve gotten over it,” she said. “What bothered me was seeing a photo of myself in London, and I didn’t see the paparazzi. I was with my two best friends. This happened last week, and some tabloid said I had a new boyfriend. But he’s my best friend’s brother. I thought, ‘Come on, guys. Get it right.’ I was with my best friend’s brother, and we were going to the rugby. They cropped my best friend out, so it was just me and me, and I didn’t see the paparazzi. That’s creepy. How did they take that photo? Other than that, I feel good knowing someone’s always watching out for me.”
Off the court, 2025 was a tough year in tennis. The latest discussions are about the long season, with players saying it’s too hard. But Raducanu has other ideas compared to players like Iga Swiatek, Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner, and fellow British number one, Jack Draper.
“I think it’s a challenge,” she said. “I don’t think we should complain because that’s what we have. We earn a good living, too. It’s not always great. It’s hard sometimes, and we’re tired mentally and physically, and everything hurts. But what can we do? Some people have bosses who make them do things, but they have to do their job. If we don’t complain, it sets a better example for younger people who want to play tennis. If they see top players complaining about the schedule, it’s not inspiring.”
Next time Raducanu plays, she’ll join her friend Draper in the United Cup, a mixed-gender team event in Australia that starts the season. Before that, she’ll start training hard this week with Roig in Barcelona to build on what she did in 2025, improve her shots, and get closer to the top players.
“I had some tough times on and off the court early in the year,” she said. “But it taught me how strong I am and what I need to do to avoid going back there. I need to spend time learning and taking care of my mind. Learning about myself has been great, so I feel good.”
ARYNA SABALENKA WARNS "NO SHOW WITHOUT US" DURING FIERY ITALIAN OPEN PRESSER
Aryna Sabalenka and top tennis stars threaten a French Open boycott over a disappointing 15% tournament revenue prize pool split.
World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka isn’t holding back; she’s openly considering a Grand Slam boycott if players keep feeling shortchanged on prize money.
She spoke out on Tuesday at the Italian Open, fresh off the heels of a letter sent by top ATP and WTA players who called the French Open’s prize pool disappointing. These players think their pay just doesn’t line up with tournament revenues, which keep going up.
“Look, without us, there’s no tournament, no show,” Sabalenka said. “At some point, I think we’ll have to boycott. It feels like that’s the only card left to play if we want to stand up for ourselves.”
She also thinks the women’s side of the game could unite like never before. “Right now, we girls could definitely come together for this; things are going on that just aren’t fair to the players. Sooner or later, I see it happening.”
Coco Gauff and Elena Rybakina, current French and Australian Open champs, threw their weight behind Sabalenka. Gauff said she “100%” sees a boycott happening if the players agree. She pointed out that this isn’t just about stars like herself. “It’s about the future, and the players grinding outside the top 50 or 100. When you look at how much money Slams make, it’s crazy that players ranked 200 are still living paycheck to paycheck, which isn’t even a conversation in most other major sports.”
For context, the French Open’s 2026 prize pool will be $72.3 million, up $6.5 million from 2025. But that's still only about 15% of expected tournament revenue, down from 15.5% last year. Players want a 22% cut by 2030, which is what they get at joint ATP and WTA 1000 events like Indian Wells or the Italian Open.
There’s another twist: prize money for players who lose in the first three rounds at Roland-Garros went up 11%, but for the champs, it only went up 9.8%. The French Tennis Federation said it wanted to help early-round losers more.
Compare that to American pro leagues: NFL, NBA, and MLB players get close to half of league revenue. Even WNBA players will get 20% after their new CBA, up from 9.3%.
In their letter, the players said they’re “getting a shrinking piece of the value they help create.” They also called out Grand Slam tournaments for being slow to modernise or give players a stronger voice.
Twenty players, including Sabalenka, Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz, and Gauff, signed onto that letter. They’ve already sent similar requests to all four Slams before asking for bigger revenue shares, a Grand Slam Player Council, and better benefits like pensions and health coverage.
World No. 3 Iga Świątek isn’t quite ready to back a boycott: she said at the Italian Open that it sounded “a bit extreme.” She’d rather see real talks between players and tennis authorities and some space to negotiate.
ATP No. 6 Ben Shelton hadn’t heard much about a potential strike, but he wants more player voice and actual seats at the decision-making table.
These latest demands echo moves from the Professional Tennis Players Association (PTPA), which Djokovic co-founded. The PTPA filed an antitrust lawsuit against the tours and all four Slams, seeking more revenue and other benefits. That case settled with Tennis Australia in late 2025.
So far, no one from the Grand Slam tournaments has responded to any of this.
JANNIK SINNER DESTROYS ZVEREV IN MADRID TO WIN FIFTH STRAIGHT MASTERS TITLE
Explore the data behind Sinner’s 28-match win streak and his quest to sweep all nine Masters titles at the upcoming Italian Open.
All week in Madrid, Jude Bellingham and Thibaut Courtois kept popping up in the stands at the Caja Mágica. They really seemed to be enjoying the matches, but they had to skip Sunday’s final. Real Madrid had their own business at Espanyol that night. Honestly, they didn’t miss much. Jannik Sinner needed just 57 minutes to obliterate Alexander Zverev in the second-fastest Masters 1000 final ever (if you don’t count retirements). Blink, and you’d miss it.
Numbers tell the whole tale here. Sinner just became the first guy to win five Masters 1000 tournaments in a row. That’s a streak that began last season in Paris and now covers Indian Wells and Miami on hard courts, plus Monte Carlo and Madrid on clay. Not even Djokovic, Nadal, or Federer pulled this off in their best years.
Sinner’s last real Masters loss? A third-round retirement in Shanghai. Now he’s on a 28-match win streak at Masters events. When he heads home for the Italian Open in Rome, he'll have a shot at topping Federer’s best run (29) and chasing Djokovic’s record of 31 straight wins. If he takes his first title in Rome, he’ll join Djokovic as the only men to sweep all nine current Masters tournaments. And after all that, Sinner just shrugged and said he doesn’t play for records. Imagine if he did.
Zverev, once again, had to find the words to sum up Sinner’s dominance, and honestly, it sounded bleak for everyone else in the draw. “Today I would have lost to anybody, to be very fair. I think today I played an awful tennis match,” Zverev admitted. And then: “There’s a big gap between Sinner and everybody else. And there’s a big gap between Alcaraz, me, maybe Novak, and everybody else. There are two gaps right now.”
That’s not encouraging for the competition, especially with Sinner heading to Roland Garros as the top favourite for a Grand Slam since Djokovic’s dominant Wimbledon run four years ago. Carlos Alcaraz, last year’s Paris champ, is out with a wrist injury, so Zverev becomes the second seed. But Zverev just got destroyed, 6-1, 6-2, in his best clay final, and he sounded convinced Sinner is a class apart. Sure, Djokovic beat Sinner at the Australian Open, but he hasn’t played since March, and he’s about to turn 39.
You really have to give Sinner credit for this run. It’s not flashy, but his consistency, resetting point by point, staying sharp every week, is rare. Tennis makes it hard to stay locked in, and everyone would do it if it were easy.
Sinner downplays the records and comparisons. “I cannot compare myself with Rafa, Roger, Novak,” he said in Madrid. “What they did is something incredible. I don’t play for these records. I play for myself, for my team, because they know what’s behind the scenes. Also, my family never changed because of my success… Sure, these are great numbers, but it takes discipline and sacrifice.”
He keeps it grounded: "There are daily routines. I’m the one who has to wake up and be ready every morning. I love the journey. I want to give myself the best chance to be my best. Not for records. What those greats did and what Novak still does is incredible. I can’t compare to them.”
But nobody can argue with what Sinner’s doing right now. He kicked off the season by becoming the first to win the Indian Wells-Miami double without dropping a set. He caught Alcaraz and took the No. 1 spot back in Monte Carlo. Now, with Alcaraz sidelined, Sinner’s got a real shot at making a historic run through Rome and Roland Garros. Outside of Djokovic, the rest just don’t seem to matter at the moment.
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