Emma Raducanu’s Wimbledon breakout is a rare bubble success story
Tennis has a way of facilitating lifechanging moments over the course of little more than a week with a few short matches, but the tale of 18-year-old Emma Raducanu is rare in its suddenness. Before this year’s grass season, Raducanu had never competed in the main draw of a top level tournament and she arrived at Wimbledon ranked No 338 in the world, having never faced a top 100 opponent. Although her talent has been cherished in British circles for a long time, she was relatively unknown beyond.
As Raducanu steps out to face Ajla Tomljanovic on No 1 Court on Monday, those days are over. Her story has defined the first week of Wimbledon and in some way it has been to her great advantage that it has happened at a time when players are sequestered in a hotel and away from the public.
In 1979, Debbie Jevans was another British teenager in the fourth round at Wimbledon, a feat not repeated until Laura Robson in 2013. Jevans says: “I was playing in different times with less distractions but I had to do press conferences and in a strange way the Covid restrictions might be helping her. She’s doing press on Zoom and not sitting in front of a room full of reporters. There are probably fewer interview things to do in general and she’s living in the bubble, so I think that may make it easier for her to shut things out.”
A common thread in Raducanu’s career is that she has played sparingly because of a variety of injury niggles, school exams and now the Covid-19 pandemic. But when she plays, she performs. After a successful junior career that included quarter-finals at Wimbledon and the US Open, her senior career win-loss record is now a handsome 56-18. She has already won three ITF titles and reached two further finals.
Her breakout week at Wimbledon has really been an extension of that continued success and it has been instructive to see just how easily her strengths have translated to the top level. Raducanu’s game is already distinctly well rounded; her athleticism pins it all together, her mobility allowing her more space to choose when to unleash.
Although the youngster’s forehand is potent in its own right, Raducanu’s backhand is her major weapon. She takes the stroke early and times it sweetly, stealing time from opponents, and she can also change directions down the line with ease. In a forehanddominated game, increasingly so on the women’s tour, her backhand reliance is particularly distinct: Raducanu is one of only two remaining players in either singles draw who has hit more backhand winners (25) than forehand winners (23).
And then there is the first shot of each point. Raducanu’s return game has been excellent throughout the week. Her aggression has yielded 52% of return games won during the tournament. But against Sorana Cirstea in Saturday’s third-round match in particular, her first serve was extremely effective. By the time she led 3-0 in the second set, she had lost just one point on her first serve. She closed out the match with 83% of first serve points won.
Anne Keothavong, a former top 50 player and Great Britain’s current Billie Jean King Cup captain, says they first met when Raducanu was 11. Keothavong was immediately struck by the youngster’s timing and her ability to step inside the court and take the ball on the rise. As Raducanu has grown up, her attention to detail has become a defining point of her progression.
“She’s a real student of the game,” says Keothavong. “She’s someone who studies her opponent, she studies her own tennis. She’ll watch replays, she’ll watch videos and she’ll talk about it. And she’s curious. So she’s not shy about asking different people for bits of information and her dad is like that as well. They’re happy to tap into lots of different people and take what they want from it and go with it. And it’s worked for her.”
While Raducanu is solid physically and from the baseline, the obvious area of progression is consistency, greater comfort in the forecourt and the capability of finishing points off at the net. But as she steps out to face Tomljanovic, the world No 75, she has everything she needs to compete. It is simply another great opportunity and as Raducanu moves further into the spotlight and deals with the pressure that is sure to come, she will learn a little more about where she is heading.