Raducanu goes down fighting right to the end of epic season
US Open champion beaten by Wang in marathon in Linz hip injury forces Briton to receive treatment in final set
The ultimate breakout year is over. It ended painfully, as tennis seasons often do, when Emma Raducanu suffered a hip spasm towards the end of her 2hr 36min tussle with China’s Wang Xinyu.
But the past month will go down as no more than an afterthought – the credits rolling at the end of a blockbuster. The real climax arrived in New York on Sept 11, the day when she overcame Leylah Fernandez in the US Open final.
Raducanu’s crazy autumn will be remembered for as long as tennis is played, just like Boris Becker’s golden summer of 1985.
Asked last night how she would look back on this life-changing year, she smiled and offered the shortest of replies. “As a surprise.”
Raducanu played solid tennis yesterday in Linz, where she arrived as the top seed, but Wang was inspired, particularly in a first set where she slammed 13 winners and committed only three unforced errors – one of the best ratios you will see all year.
It was heartening to see Raducanu offer bucketloads of grit in the second set, which she snatched on a tie-break – the first tie-break, remarkably, that she has played on the WTA Tour. But the issue with her hip emerged in the middle of the deciding set, and left her unable to move with her usual fluency.
Even though she paused for a medical time-out before the 10th game, it was not enough to fully resolve the problem, and an apparently nerveless Wang served out for her 6-1, 6-7, 7-5 win.
Some will point to Raducanu’s post-us Open form and say that it proves her to be a flash in the pan – a promising teenager who got lucky with the draw in New York. The critics will argue that, in five tour matches, she has gone LWWLL, concluding with yesterday’s defeat by the world No106. But that would fail to understand the context.
In the wider picture, Raducanu has been travelling to events without a coach and learning on the hoof. Yesterday’s defeat was typical of the past month, in that Raducanu was trying to acclimatise to her surroundings against an opponent who had already come through qualifying and then won a first-round match in the main draw.
Such a dizzy rise would destabilise many people, but Raducanu has shown maturity and balance in her recent media appearances. She has the character and the grit to put together a strong off-season training block – probably lasting four weeks – before the tennis carousel cranks up again, first with exhibition appearances in London and Abu Dhabi, and then with January’s Australian Open. Although Raducanu will now have a new coach at her side to guide her – in the shape of 44-year-old German Torben Beltz – she is an extremely smart analyst of the game and knows very well where she needs to improve.
“A lot has happened this year,” she said after last night’s match. “[To have gone from] where I was in January, February, March compared to now, I mean, I would have taken it. But I think that I obviously learnt how much room I have to develop physically, and what playing on the tour week in, week out actually means. Because clearly my body is still trying to get up to speed.
“I was honestly quite happy with the level that I put out and tried to fight back. But all these players are good and the margins are so fine.
Actual experience is something that I’ve always been lacking, and currently am, a little bit.”
Raducanu was also asked last night about the criticisms levelled at the weekend by Eddie Jones, the England rugby head coach, who suggested that she had become distracted by fashion brands and gala
appearances. Raducanu claimed to be unaware of what he had said. But she did acknowledge: “Many people are going to have opinions of me and what I’m doing, but I just know that I’m staying focused with a small circle around me and I definitely have my parents, who would 100 per cent let me know if I was getting swayed.
So I think that I’m honestly very zoned in.”
Meanwhile, Andy Murray extended his 2021 season with a straight-sets win in the first round of the Stockholm Open last night. In what is set to be his last event of the year, Murray overcame Norway’s Viktor Durasovic 6-1, 7-6. Murray was not troubled until Durasovic broke back for 3-3 in the second set, then dug deep to take a third match point in the tie-break.
Murray now faces Italy’s world No10, Jannik Sinner, in the second round.