Emma Raducanu’s heroic displays in New York have left British tennis in a state of delighted disbelief. By reaching the last 16 of both her first two majors, the 18-year-old has achieved a feat not seen on the women’s tour since Jennifer Capriati – perhaps the most touted teenager in the history of the game – in 1990.
As Raducanu prepares for her fourth-round match against American world No 43 Shelby Rogers, there are even a few whispers asking whether she could be a contender to win the US Open.
This might be over-egging things, given that – for all her excellence to date – Raducanu has yet to encounter a seed in New York. Or at Wimbledon, for that matter. But when you are taking out dangerous opponents by 6-0, 6-1 scorelines, as she did against world No 41 Sara Sorribes Tormo on Saturday evening, the normal rules of engagement are suspended.
“You see special when you see it for the first time,” said Martina Navratilova. “She’s one of those people. It’s not hype, it’s real.”
Raducanu is not the only 18-year-old to have made her mark on this event. In a series of dramatic upsets on Friday night, Canada’s Leylah Fernandez took out defending champion Naomi Osaka while Spanish prodigy Carlos Alcaraz beat third seed Stefanos Tsitsipas in the men’s draw.
“I think we all inspire each other to play better,” Raducanu told reporters after her victory against Sorribes Tormo. “For me today, I wanted to join them in the second week as well, so that was an extra bit of motivation.”
British tennis fans will remember a similar explosion of optimism when the 18-year-old Andy Murray burst onto the scene in 2005, beating the 14th seed Radek Stepanek at Wimbledon before coming through the US Open’s qualifying event without dropping a set – as Raducanu did the week before last.
But Murray still needed to upgrade his gangling teenage body into something more robust, before he could take on the likes of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. The same issue does not apply in the three-set women’s game, and in any case girls reach physical maturity earlier than boys. That is why female meteors land more often than male ones.
Before Capriati, Monica Seles made the semi-finals of Roland Garros at 15, while Chris Evert did the same at the US Open at 16. Both players have gone down as all-time greats. But such are the names that Raducanu is now keeping company with, on a purely statistical level.
From the wider perspective of British tennis, her emergence couldn’t have come at a better time. Murray has not been a contender at the majors since his hip blew up in 2017. Johanna Konta is restricted by chronic knee trouble and has spoken about a possible career cut-off at the end of next season. 2020 was a particularly grim year, with only eight British wins at grand-slam level – which was the lowest total since 2007.
Raducanu has now won six matches in two majors on her own. Her only defeat to date came against Alja Tomljanovic at Wimbledon, when she was forced to retire with breathing difficulties after losing the first set.
Indeed, that remains the only set she has lost at a major. Such is her transformational impact that – from the Lawn Tennis Association’s perspective – her coming could have been presaged by a comet.
Can Raducanu make it seven wins against Rogers? The American produced a remarkable plotline of her own on Saturday night, coming back to beat world No 1 Ashleigh Barty in a deciding set tie-break after Barty had twice served for the match. As a result, Raducanu will still not face a seed unless she makes it through to Wednesday’s quarter-final. The potential opponent there would either be Olympic gold medallist Belinda Bencic or last year’s French Open champion Iga Swiatek.
Rogers is a tall, powerful player, standing two inches taller than Raducanu at 5ft 9in, and serving bigger too. This could well develop into a race to the first strike in each rally. Raducanu has not faced anyone at this US Open who set out to overpower her in the manner that Tomljanovic did. But that would seem to be the best approach against a young woman who controls the court brilliantly once she gets onto the front foot in rallies.
The points and prize money escalate dramatically at this stage of a major. Raducanu has already pushed her ranking up to somewhere around 100 – not bad for a woman who was ranked No 184 when she arrived in the USA in late July. Another win against Rogers, and she would move into the mid-70s, effectively off the back of two tournaments.
Plus, there is the cash. She has already bagged a little over £190,000, and that figure would climb to more than £300,000 with a quarter-final appearance. She is still on the LTA’s pro-scholarship programme, which offers young players up to £80,000 towards their annual costs. But after this tournament, Raducanu will be well placed to cut herself free of the federation’s ties.
Dropping ‘waiter’s tray’ serve let teenager deliver on her potential
Coach Mark Petchey stepped in last year to fine-tune three key areas of Emma Raducanu’s game – with impressive results
By Simon Briggs
“It takes a village,” Mark Petchey told me during Wimbledon, as he described the various technical tweaks that had turned Emma Raducanu from promising junior into grand-slam sensation.
Petchey – the former British No 1 who is now back working with Andy Murray – was referencing the large number of coaches who had given their input both to Raducanu and to her father, Ian, who keeps a close eye on her development.
Yet he was understating his own role, as Petchey himself came in as a locum in July last year when Covid prevented the experienced Belgian coach Philippe Dehaes from travelling across the English Channel. He and Raducanu spent the next five months reconstructing several core aspects of her game.
What Petchey found was a 17-year-old with a razor-sharp mind and absolute commitment, but also at least three serious flaws. One was affecting her serve, another her forehand and the third involved her quixotic choice of racket.
“My first impression was that this was an incredible person,” Petchey said on Sunday. “Her attitude for every single session was 100 per cent on the money. She was driving over from Bromley [south-east London] to the National Tennis Centre [south-west London] every day, and she never turned up tired or said it was too much. We would go out on the court for three hours and she would be completely focused, asking great questions, and working to a plan that she often set for herself.
“On those occasions when I asked her what she wanted to do, nine out of 10 times she would say ‘return of serve’. So, the fact that she is on her way to becoming the best returner in the world is no fluke.”
Such were the upsides. What, then, were the negatives? Let’s start with the racket. We will not mention what she used, but Petchey suggests that he would not recommend it for a social player, let alone an aspiring grand-slam contender.
After testing sessions, they settled on a Wilson Blade 104, which offers an extra quarter-inch of length. This does not sound a lot, but that tiny amount of leverage helps her find better angles on her serve. “Lots of players like a longer racket, although they don’t often talk about it,” Petchey said. “People like Venus Williams [who also uses the Blade 104] or Lindsay Davenport.”
As for the serve itself, Raducanu had a nasty case of the waiter’s tray.
You will see this at any local tennis club – the racket going back with its face pointed at the sky, so that you could balance a drink on the strings. Whereas, in an optimal motion, the face stays closed until the very last second to generate lag, snap and racket-head speed.
“Emma was going out to play a British Tour match [in July 2020] and she said to me, ‘I can’t hit a kick serve’,” Petchey recalled. “I didn’t want to address it until after the match, but it was because her technique needed a rejig. I had some help on that from Esteban Carril [Johanna Konta’s former coach] and now it’s looking a nice, smooth, technically correct motion.”
Finally came the forehand, which Dehaes had already adjusted to a more open, less extreme grip. Petchey worked on raising Raducanu’s elbow in the take-back, via many painstaking repetitions and drop-ball feeding from the hand.
“The big thing was to create more shape on the ball with topspin,” he said. “At that stage, her forehand was all Ferrari, no Volvo. But you need to build some safety margin in, so that it’s 80 per cent Ferrari and 20 per cent Volvo. Now she can control the ball better without sacrificing too much power.”
It was perhaps fortunate that there was little opportunity for Raducanu to compete in the summer of 2020 while these changes were bedding in. She played a few unofficial matches, but it was not until the grass-court season of 2021 that she had the chance to apply her new game to the professional tour. And everyone remembers how that turned out.
Since Petchey’s shift ended, Raducanu has worked with other coaches, including Nigel Sears (who formerly looked after 2008 French Open champion Ana Ivanovic) and now Andrew Richardson. For most players, this chorus of voices would be too much, creating a kind of tennis Babel. But her intelligence is such that she can synthesise the best advice from multiple sources without becoming confused.
Petchey remains as impressed by the woman behind the racket as he is by the player who has now reached the last 16 in both her first two majors. “She wrote me an incredibly nice Christmas card,” he said, “which I think is indicative of who she is. Other 18-year-olds might send a WhatsApp, but not many would bother to put pen to paper. I couldn’t admire her more.”