"I'm training six hours a day" - Raducanu hits back at critics claiming she's not focused on tennis

Emma Raducanu has hit back at her critics and insisted it is “unfair” to suggest she is more interested in her growing list of sponsors than playing tennis.

The US Open champion suffered a frustrating second-round loss to Katerina Sinaiakova at the Miami Open on Thursday night, bringing her hard-court campaign to an end until later this summer. Following the defeat, some comments on social media again highlighted her growing list of commercial partners. Speaking to various newspapers after the loss Raducanu hit back at the critics:

"Maybe you just see, on the news or on social media, me signing this or that deal and I feel like it’s quite misleading because I’m doing five, six hours a day (of training), I’m at the club for 12 hours a day. But I throw out one post in the car on the way to practice and all of a sudden it’s ‘I don’t focus on tennis’. I think that it is unfair but it’s something I have learned to deal with and become a bit more insensitive to the outside noise."

She further said:

"At the end of the day, I feel like my days (with sponsors) are pretty limited. I’m not doing crazy days. I’m doing three, four days every quarter, so it’s really not that much.”

She also spoke about the difficulty of ignoring headlines like that but she's doing better:

“In the beginning I probably would occasionally peek at what’s being said. But now I don’t really bother doing that because sometimes it’s not going to be so favourable or positive and I feel like it can get to you. I’m just learning to thicken my skin a bit. For me, I’m doing these things, but I’m training hard, putting the hours in and especially now I feel I just need to get more volume and capacity. I am doing a lot and I’m spending a lot of time at the club."