Since Emma Raducanu’s explosion on to 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 on Friday, four players born in or after 2002 – Raducanu’s birth year – were still in the women’s 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 on Friday. “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 she has struggled to scrape two consecutive wins together. 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 third-round 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.
Gauff’s victory on Friday 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 quarter-finalist in Paris last year.
When the fervour around Gauff’s dramatic arrival three years ago eventually died down, she was given the time and space to develop – a luxury Raducanu has yet to enjoy. Even though she remains a once-in-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 – safely away from the threat of world No 1, Iga Swiatek.
Compatriot Amanda Anisimova may just be the player that 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 on Sunday.
Meanwhile 19-year-old Diane Parry, a French wild card who stunned reigning champion Barbora Krejcikova in the first round, bowed out to Sloane Stephens on Friday but China’s Zheng Qinwen – who is the same age – could yet make it three teenagers in the fourth round if she wins on Saturday.
Raducanu will no doubt 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.