US Open champ Raducanu shows poise at just 18
NEW YORK—EMMA Raducanu sat on her sideline chair at Arthur Ashe Stadium with her left knee, in her words, “gushing with blood.”
OK, maybe a bit of hyperbole there. Still, the 18-year-old from Britain had just hurt herself on a fall behind the baseline at a most inopportune moment: serving for the US Open championship in only the second Grand Slam tournament of her nascent career.
When play resumed after a trainer cleaned and bandaged Raducanu’s cut, she was about to face a break point in Saturday’s final against 19-year-old Filipino-canadian Leylah Fernandez. This was after Raducanu already had wasted two match points in the previous game. Could have been a time to lose her focus, lose her way. To be overwhelmed by it all.
Instead, this is what Raducanu’s thought process was during that delay, a mindset that bodes well for the out-of-nowhere title winner at Flushing Meadows: “I guess I just went over and was really trying to think what my patterns of play were going to be, what I was going to try to execute. Going out there facing a break point after a two-, threeminute disruption isn’t easy. I think I managed for sure to really pull off the clutch plays when I needed to.”
Just as she did throughout her impressive trip to New York. Her 6-4, 6-3 victory over Fernandez—who had been playing well enough to beat defending champion Naomi Osaka and three other seeded women over the past two weeks—made Raducanu a star.
It also made her the first player in the professional era, which began in 1968, to go from the qualifying rounds at a major to the person clutching the trophy at the end. And the youngest female champion at a Grand Slam tournament since Maria Sharapova was 17 in 2004.
That doesn’t necessarily mean, of course, that Raducanu is destined to accumulate multiple major titles and climb to No. 1 in the Women’s Tennis Association rankings, the way Sharapova did. There’s a long way to go for both of those achievements, although Raducanu will rise to No. 23 on Monday after beginning the season at No. 345 and the US Open at No. 150.
Still, there is no denying the shotmaking and the poise that allowed Raducanu to win 10 consecutive straightset matches, three in qualifying, seven in the main draw. She uses an attacking