No signs of pressure as another big test is aced
STRANGE to say that, prior to yesterday, former Chelsea footballer Graeme Le saux had spent more time on Wimbledon’s Centre Court than emma raducanu. as an all england Club member, the once-international left back had been one of those chosen to break the surface in with a social mixed doubles on saturday. The us Open champion had to content herself with some prior visualisation in the arena, familiarising herself with its dimensions.
Whatever she did in the past few days, it worked.
Last year’s a-level student passed this exam with flying colours, after a tricky paper was set by belgium’s alison van uytvanck. she first encountered raducanu in november 2018, when the star of new York was a total unknown playing a small international tournament on the Wirral. The teenager’s opponent was Van uytvanck’s then-partner
Greet Minnen. after raducanu had won, Van uytvanck — already an established top-100 player who was practising there that week — made a point of telling the teenager’s coach how impressed she was with her level. she will know even better now how good she is, having tried everything to ruin this muchanticipated Centre Court debut. The world no 46 mixed it up with heavy forehand drives and awkward slices that invited raducanu to generate her own pace, but most of the time the 19-year-old had the answer. at times the belgian made it easy by misfiring with her serve. Five double faults, often at crucial times, were definitely helpful. Yet this was still an excellent showing from raducanu, who had every right to lose, given that she had managed just seven competitive games on grass coming in. by contrast, Van uytvanck had played 14 matches on the turf across four weeks — winning two titles at the lower end of the tour scale.
One of them was the UK’s grass-court curtain-raiser down the road in surbiton.
Given her ranking of 46, and the lowered seeding threshold due to the barring of players from russia and belarus, it was one of the toughest first-round draws raducanu could have had. and playing on the Centre Court can be tricky for a british player if you are not used to it. nowhere does a well-meaning groan after a mistake like the biggest arena at sW19, and that can be debilitating. If it intimidates overseas players, it is often more through its history rather than any venom produced by patriotic fervour.
That was certainly the case yesterday with it barely half-full when they started, many patrons having taken extended advantage of the now statutory 20 minutes between matches. raducanu showed, beneath her beatific smile, that there’s no shortage of steel to deal with this, and there was no danger of last year on Court 1 repeating itself. Far from being overwhelmed, an hour before the match she was sitting calmly on the players’ lawn, chatting happily with her mother and the rest of her team. ever one to do things her own way, she later explained the status of Jane O’ Donoghue, who has taken a break from her job in banking to help with coaching over these weeks. raducanu does not try to overstate her role. ‘We just chat about life and everything. she’s always been there for me — she’s just a great family friend,’ raducanu said. Yesterday’s first set was close to attritional, and when raducanu mistakenly slumped into her chair 1-0 down in the second (not a proper changeover), you feared that she might be short on fuel. Winning the last five games put paid to that and she’s on her way.
Is it the start of some miraculous run all the way through to the end of the second week, as was seen nine months ago?
On this evidence probably not, because at times there was a lack of power, perhaps a residual effect of last week’s limitations.