Teenagers show slam potential
Raducanu has gone but Gauff and Fernandez carry torch for their generation by reaching French Open fourth round
Since Emma Raducanu’s explosion onto the scene at the US Open, it has been tricky to put her results into context. How do you measure the success of a player who went from unknown to major champion in the space of one mad summer?
Well, one place to start is to look at her contemporaries. And this week, in Paris, they are flying.
At the start of play yesterday, four women born in or after 2002 – Raducanu’s birth year – were still in the singles draw. Two progressed to the fourth round: Coco Gauff and Leylah Fernandez, the woman Raducanu beat in the final in New York last September.
Fernandez’s career has taken almost as much of a boost from that event as Raducanu’s, as she leapt into the top 20 practically overnight and attracted a surge of interest. It gives them a unique connection.
“We have just mutual respect for each other,” Fernandez said yesterday. “When we see each other crossing the halls, practice courts, we always smile at each other, because we both know what we did was incredible.”
Like Raducanu, Fernandez has delivered a mixed bag of results since September – albeit with more notable highlights. She won the WTA 250 title in Guadalajara, and made a run to the last 16 at Indian Wells, but otherwise has struggled to scrape together two consecutive wins. It makes her progress in Paris, so far her best performance at a major barring New York, all the more significant.
The plucky pocket rocket’s style is not unlike Raducanu’s: both benefited from the fast courts at Flushing Meadows, taking the ball early and shaving time away from their opponents, as well as finding tight angles to win points. Both can also seem underpowered against certain players, as we saw with Raducanu’s performances in Paris ahead of her second-round exit.
Fernandez got through her thirdround match with pure grit, in a 7-5, 3-6, 7-5 thriller against Belinda Bencic, whom Raducanu had beaten in the US Open quarter-finals.
‘I’ve been coming to France since I was 10. On the clay courts, I guess that makes me, I don’t want to say a specialist, but good at it’
Gauff’s victory yesterday was impressive too, for very different reasons, as she flew through two controlled and mature sets against Kaia Kanepi to win 6-3, 6-4. Kanepi’s is a name no player wants to see in the draw at a major, such is the Estonian’s propensity to upset the seeds, but Gauff made sure she never gave her a look-in.
“I’ve been coming to France since I was 10,” she said of her comfort on the clay. “I think that’s helped me a lot, working at the Mouratoglou Academy. On the clay courts, I guess that makes me, I don’t want to say a specialist, but good at it.”
Gauff has established herself as a consistent threat on the tour over the past few years, making it easy to forget that she is still so young. She is 17 months Raducanu’s junior, only turning 18 in March, and celebrated her high-school graduation at the Eiffel Tower last week.
Her historic breakthrough at Wimbledon in 2019 came so early in her life, when she was just 15, that her experience on the circuit compared to Raducanu almost makes her a veteran already. She has reached at least the last 16 at three of the four majors and was a quarterfinalist in Paris last year.
Even though she remains a oncein-a-generation talent, the American has been plugging away on the tour with quiet focus. She consistently racks up two or three wins a tournament, but this next week could be the moment for the 18th seed to take advantage of the wide open bottom half of the draw.
Compatriot Amanda Anisimova may just be the player who stands in her way, though. Still only 20 herself, she was a semi-finalist here in 2019 and is the second-favourite to win the tournament as a whole. She plays Fernandez tomorrow.
Meanwhile, 19-year-old Diane Parry, a French wild card who stunned defending champion Barbora Krejcikova in the first round, bowed out to Sloane Stephens yesterday but China’s Zheng Qinwen – who is the same age – could yet make it three teenagers in the fourth round if she wins today.
Raducanu will be watching from afar, as she switches from the clay to the grass courts of home. Though she was the first of this generation to win a major, the evidence suggests she may not be the last.