Karolina Muchova came to console Emma Raducanu when she became visibly distressed (Image: WTA)
Karolina Muchova has spoken out after a ‘stalker’ was removed during her match against in Dubai.
Raducanu while trailing 2-0 in their second-round match.
It later emerged that was removed from the stands.
There was concern when Raducanu became distressed early in her contest with Muchova. The Czech star came over to console her opponent. After the spectator in question was removed, the match resumed.
The Brit showed courage to continue playing, and she erased a 4-0 deficit. But Muchova still took the opening set in a tiebreak and went on to win 7-6(6) 6-4.
The world No. 17 has now addressed the incident for the first time, admitting she didn’t realise what was happening at first.
“Yeah, it was strange situation,” Muchova said after beating McCartney Kessler in the round of 16.
“I honestly went for my serving. I didn’t even know something was happening. Then I saw she’s not on the other side. So I went to check with the referee what is happening. She told me what is happening.
Karolina Muchova went on to beat Emma Raducanu (Image: Getty)
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“Yeah, obviously you don’t want to see these things to be happening to anyone, to any woman, any girl. So I was just trying to be there, maybe calm her down a little bit.
“I’m happy they solved it pretty fast. I think she was fine after a while. Then we just kept going with the match.”
The former French Open finalist also said she had never encountered anything similar herself.
She added: “I’m lucky around me it’s nice fans usually. Yeah, I wasn’t in the situation. Again, I felt sorry for her and for anyone who has to go through this.
“Obviously there are people texting us after matches all the time. Sometimes not the nicest messages. But never it happened to me that someone would like actually approach me live. Yeah, I guess I’m lucky it didn’t happen to me.”
Raducanu has since returned home and
“Thank you for the messages of support. Difficult experience yesterday (Tuesday) but I’ll be okay and proud of how I came back and competed despite what happened at the start of the match,” the Brit wrote.
“Thank you to Karolina for being a great sport and best of luck to her for the rest of the tournament.”
The WTA confirmed that a man exhibiting “fixated behaviour” had approached Raducanu on Monday and was identified in the stands of her match against Muchova.
“On Monday, February 17, was approached in a public area by a man who exhibited fixated behaviour,” the women’s tennis tour said in a 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.”