Emma Raducanu is eyeing up a future as an Oxford University student, according to her friend and fellow tennis professional Fran Jones, who recently spent a day touring Oxford’s colleges with Raducanu.
In between the grass-court events at Nottingham and Eastbourne, Raducanu posted photographs of the visit on her Instagram page, featuring not only a view of her in the main quad of Corpus Christi College but also a picture of punts travelling down the River Cherwell.
Asked about the day out on Friday, Jones said: “We’re both pretty academic, I would say, so we have a vision for the future. And Oxford is definitely something that we would both enjoy.
“Tennis is consuming and it’s important that you can have that vision for your career afterwards, and sometimes keeping in touch with it. And so I think that’s what we were doing. Having an in-touch day with our post-tennis career, which is important to try and keep alive.
“Because we live in a bubble, it’s healthy to have that vision. So that when you do come back in here [at Wimbledon, where Jones is preparing for a first-round meeting with Croatia’s Petra Martic], you’re ready to go again, instead of everything else being drowned out.”
Jones – who has built a professional sporting career despite only having six fingers and seven toes as a result of a rare genetic condition – has always been a quick learner.
She mastered Spanish soon after moving to Barcelona at the age of nine, to train at the same Sanchez-Casal Academy where the young Andy Murray honed his game. She has previously admitted to focusing her sights on Oxbridge from an even earlier stage.
As for Raducanu, she earned an A* in maths and an A in economics from Newstead Wood School, and has previously been connected with Cambridge University by her grandmother Niculina Raducanu.
In an interview carried out in Bucharest in 2022, Niculina told the Daily Mail that “I know she wants to go to university to study economics as soon as she has the time. Cambridge University offered her the possibility to take classes there. They said she is welcome any time.”
In response to that interview, Raducanu said: “My nan would definitely prefer me to go to Cambridge. I haven’t applied for anything. Cambridge for me, I don’t have to do it now. I can always go back to my education and it’s something I want to do because there’s more to life than tennis. It’s something I want to be going back to later on. Currently I will just learn but in other ways, not necessarily through a system.”
Back at Wimbledon on Friday, the 23-year-old Jones told reporters that tennis is an excellent preparation for a variety of careers. “There’s a lot I want to do in my life,” said Jones. “And I feel like sometimes I don’t have enough time to do everything that I’d like to do. But I would like to use my different skill sets off the court once I’m done with tennis.
“I think tennis is just a fantastic sport to provide you with the life experiences and the values that many people don’t manage to attain until a much later age. So I think it gives you a great opportunity to step into that new world for us with a fantastic amount of experience. And I think that’s just something to look forward to.”