A tearful Emma Raducanu was reduced to cowering behind the umpire’s chair at the Dubai Open after she spotted a man who had previously ‘exhibited fixated behaviour’ towards her sitting in the stands.
Raducanu’s rain-delayed meeting with Karolina Muchova was just two games old when the 22-year-old approached the chair umpire, Germany’s Miriam Bley, in visible distress.
She appeared to offer a few brief words of explanation before retreating behind the umpire’s chair, where she was consoled by her Czech opponent while Bley called tournament officials to alert them to the problem.
The WTA, the governing body of the women’s game, later released a statement revealing that the man was removed from the stands and would be barred from attending future WTA events pending further investigation of the circumstances surrounding the incident.
‘On Monday, February 17, Emma Raducanu was approached in a public area by a man who exhibited fixated behavior,’ said the statement. ‘This same individual was identified in the first few rows during Emma’s match on Tuesday at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships and subsequently ejected. He will be banned from all WTA events pending a threat assessment.
‘Player safety is our top priority, and tournaments are advised on security best practices for international sporting events.
‘The WTA is actively working with Emma and her team to ensure her well-being and provide any necessary support. We remain committed to collaborating with tournaments and their security teams worldwide to maintain a safe environment for all players.’
While no details have yet been revealed about the man’s identity, it is understood there is no connection between the latest incident and a previous case involving a delivery driver from north-west London who was handed a five-year restraining order in February 2022 after repeatedly visiting Raducanu’s home.
Following that episode, Raducanu said the actions of Amrit Magar, who loitered outside her house, left unwanted gifts and cards, and stole property from the porch had made her feeling unsafe in her own home and left her ‘constantly looking over her shoulder’.
‘Since all this has happened, I have felt creeped out,’ Raducanu said in a statement at the time. ‘I feel very apprehensive if I go out, especially if I am on my own.’
‘Because of this I feel like my freedom has been taken away from me. I am constantly looking over my shoulder. I feel on edge and worried this could happen again.’
Raducanu’s first meeting with Muchova, a former French Open finalist who has been ranked as high as eighth in the world, had originally been scheduled for court one at Dubai’s Aviation Club Tennis Centre before the inclement weather forced a switch to court two.
The court is sandwiched between two others, with spectators seated behind the baseline rather than along either side of the court. That means Raducanu, who went on to lose 7-6 (8-6), 6-4, would have been directly facing the man from one end of the court, while aware of his presence behind her at the other.
While Raducanu was able to continue after a brief delay, comparisons will inevitably be drawn with similar incidents involving high-profile female players.
The most notorious of those involved Monica Seles, a former world No 1 from Serbian Yugoslavia who was stabbed during a changeover at an event in Hamburg in April 1993.
Her attacker, a 38-year-old German named Günter Parche, made his way past security staff before plunging a knife into Seles’ upper back. He was motivated by a desire to see Steffi Graf, Seles’ German rival, restored to the No 1 ranking.
The episode is widely regarded as having altered the course of tennis history. Seles, who was 19 at the time, had amassed eight grand slam titles by the time of the incident, but would add only one more, at the 1996 n Open, before her retirement in 2008.
Efforts were made to improve security arrangements at tournaments in the aftermath of the attack. These included more thorough searching of spectators as they arrived at events, more security staff to accompany players between the locker room the court, and a ramped-up security presence around the court, most visibly at the change of ends.
Yet the measure did little to create a greater sense of safety among the players.
In September 2001, a 34-year-old German man named Albrecht Stromeyer began stalking Serena Williams, following her across tournaments in Europe and the US before he was finally apprehended by police at the following year’s US Open.
The American former world No 1 was later hounded by another man, Patenema Ouedraogo, who was 40 when police apprehended him as he attempted to enter a gated complex in south Florida where Williams was living in 2011.
Martina Hingis, another former world No 1, was moved to hire a bodyguard after she was persistently followed by Dubravko Rajcevic, a middle-aged n naval architect, between 1999 and 2000.
Rajcevic, who shadowed her from tournament to tournament, lurked outside her home, and showered her with letters and gifts, was arrested in Miami in spring 2000 and subsequently jailed for two years after Hingis testified against him in court.
‘I’m happy that he’s in jail,’ Hingis later told the Observer. ‘I guess we attract these strange people. Girls in short skirts – the highest paid women’s sport – the profile. It’s become so much bigger, more global, like showbusiness.’
Following Sloane Stephens’ title-winning run at the US Open in 2017, the FBI were moved to intervene when an obsessive fan began bombarding Sloane Stephens and her family with messages.
‘It was like, thousands of messages that this one person had sent, only to me,’ Stephens told the Tennis Insider Club podcast. ‘After I had won the US Open, it was literally non-stop, but it was to everyone in my family.’
Stephens’ fellow countrywoman Danielle Collins, the world No 12, says the problem is pervasive in women’s tennis.
‘I’ve had to be very vigilant and cautious about how I conduct my life, to make sure I’m safe,’ Collins said last summer.
‘I think sometimes that has come across to fans as being withdrawn, distant, but the reality is that sometimes I’ve had to be more careful about what I say and do because I don’t want certain people knowing where I am, what I’m doing or patterns in my day-to-day life.’
Raducanu’s second-round loss to Muchova came as the player was keen to build a significant run during the Middle East swing after two disappointing first-round exits.
The player received wild card entry to both the Abu Dhabi Open and the Qatar open, but was knocked out in straight sets by former Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrusova and n Open opponent Ekaterina Alexandrova respectively.