Emma Raducanu has confessed that a brief note from a fixated fan who confronted her at the Dubai Tennis Championships left her “really worried.” The young British star was visibly rattled during her second-round match against Karolina Muchova, spotting the man in the crowd. She broke into tears and sought shelter behind the umpire’s chair, sobbing.
It emerged that the same man, who’d approached her the previous day, sat front-row. The WTA labeled his actions “fixated behaviour,” ejecting him mid-match and barring him from future events. Ahead of Indian Wells, Raducanu recounted how he’d accosted her in a coffee shop, admitting he’d tracked her “everywhere,” sparking fear.
“There were two run-ins—the second one freaked me out,” she said. “The first felt like a typical fan encounter, until he said he followed me everywhere. He lingered, watching me in the coffee shop. The second time was genuinely alarming.”
Flanked by two security guards—extra muscle post-Dubai—Raducanu relived the ordeal. “I was a wreck,” she said. “I saw him in the first game and thought, ‘How am I going to get through this?’ Facing Karolina, a top-17 player, I couldn’t even see the ball. I told myself, ‘I need a moment.’ The first four games slipped away—I wasn’t there.”
Despite crumbling off-court, Raducanu praised her grit for pushing on. “It was a solid effort to keep playing in that mess,” she noted. “I finished, even had first-set chances. It was emotional—not just the loss, but weeks of buildup. I took a week off to reset, and I’m feeling better now.”
At Indian Wells, her first event since, she aims to shake it off. She’ll face Moyuka Uchijima first, with Coco Gauff awaiting in round two if she advances.
