Emma Raducanu has withdrawn from her mixed doubles match with Andy Murray this evening, thereby ending his Wimbledon career.
Murray said goodbye to Wimbledon after losing alongside his brother, Jamie, on Thursday, but was expecting to have one more outing with Raducanu. They had been due to play in the final match of Saturday afternoon, on No 1 Court.
In explaining her decision to withdraw, Raducanu cited a problem with her wrist. She said: “Unfortunately I woke up with some stiffness in my right wrist this morning, so therefore I have decided to make the very tough decision to withdraw from the mixed doubles tonight. I’m disappointed as I was really looking forward to playing with Andy but got to take care.”
Rajeev Ram and Katie Volynets have replaced Murray and Raducanu in the draw for the mixed doubles.
Raducanu remains in the singles competition, and faced playing two matches in quick succession if she started on a mixed doubles campaign. She is expected to face Lulu Sun, a qualifier from New Zealand, in the singles competition on Sunday, if rain does not throw the Wimbledon schedule into too much chaos.
Raducanu’s team had expressed surprise at her decision to take up Murray’s invitation to play mixed doubles. She justified saying yes on the theory that playing alongside a retiring legend would give her emotional energy that she could take into her singles campaign.
“Certain things take energy from you, certain things give you energy,” she said earlier this week. “I think playing with Andy will just massively inspire me and just give me a lot of life and energy and adrenaline, and I love that. I’m physically in a really good spot and also if I’m in the second week of Wimbledon, I’ll be jumping for joy, so it’s for me a win-win.”
There are precious few examples of players experiencing success in both singles and mixed doubles in Wimbledon history. The peerless Martina Navratilova was the last to win both simultaneously, climbing the mountain in 1985, having paired with Paul McNamee. She took the singles title again the following year but lost in the final of the mixed doubles with Heinz Günthardt.
The only other women in history to pull off that particular double was Ann Jones in 1969 (doubles with Fred Stolle) and Billie Jean King in 1973 (doubles with Owen Davidson).
Several have tried and failed since. If we dial down our expectations to deep runs in both events, we could point to singles quarter-finalist Mary Pierce winning the mixed doubles with Mahesh Bhupathi in 2005, or Yaroslava Shvedova in 2016 reaching the quarter-finals in singles and a semi-final in the mixed in 2016. This particular double has proved too tall an order even for Serena Williams, who won the mixed in 1998, four years before she won her first Wimbledon.
Source Agencies
