The way this US Open is going, there may need to be a support group for the players Emma Raducanu has beaten. After Friday night’s semi-final, Maria Sakkari was the latest one to admit that “I wasn’t myself on court.”
The people across the net from Raducanu have played some shocking tennis. In the third round, world No 41 Sara Sorribes Tormo didn’t hit an attacking forehand until the tenth game. In the fourth round, Shelby Rogers (world No 43) sprayed an unforced error on every third point. In the quarter-final, Olympic champion Belinda Bencic’s returns disintegrated to the level of a clubbie.
I’ve heard a few curmudgeons grumble about the standard of women’s tennis, based on this small sample size. But an alternative explanation – which becomes more persuasive with each match – is that Raducanu is breaking her opponents down with her relentlessness and tactical mastery.
According to Dan Travis, a coach and analyst who runs The Art of Winning website, it all starts with what he calls “the cage”. This is the area just around the service notch, deep and central in the court. That’s where Raducanu aims the majority of her returns. And she is remarkably consistent in finding it. Throughout the Sakkari semi-final, she never missed two returns in a row.
“The cage is important because it limits your opponent’s options and pushes them back,” said Travis. “The glory shots in tennis land near to the sidelines. But if you go wide without enough penetration then you open up the angles to your opponent. You make the court much bigger, in effect, and thus harder to defend. When you go deep and central, you’re saying ‘Come on, what have you got to hurt me?’ You’re asking them to gamble, if they want to hit a winner. And the fact is that errors decide matches, not winners.”
Raducanu’s return game is her speciality. As her former coach Mark Petchey told Telegraph Sport last week, “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.”
Whether serving or using her aggressive return, Raducanu usually arrives at the third stroke of the rally with an advantage. Crucially, she is usually further up the court than her opponent – a vital detail, as it means that she has more access to angles and can take time away from the other player.
Striking the ball early is often more effective than hitting it harder, even though it might not look as spectacular. The benefits redouble, because each step forward is one yard the ball doesn’t have to travel on its way to you, and then another yard it doesn’t have to travel on its way back.
And here comes the second key aspect of the Raducanu game. She generally doesn’t look for the spectacular winner early in the point. Instead she hits to what Travis calls the “inside corners” – large targets which are a couple of metres diagonally inside the actual corners of the court – with enough weight and margin over the net to make her opponent feel that she isn’t going to make easy errors. All the onus is on them to make the play from what is a slightly disadvantaged starting position.
“It’s a suffocating kind of pressure,” said Naomi Cavaday, the former top-200 player and Bromley-based tennis coach who has worked with Raducanu in the past. “She gets on top of you early in the point, then holds you down. It’s like when you’re fighting or wrestling, and you’re being held down, that is exhausting. And you see how her opponents have reacted. Sakkari was fuming. Bencic was throwing her racket. They’re frustrated because it’s so difficult to make significant inroads.”
If you watch Amazon Prime’s broadcasts, you will see them pick out some of Raducanu’s most glamorous shots. The ones that fly up the sidelines for clean winners. It’s important to hit a few of these, so that your opponent knows that you can pull the trigger when you want to, and doesn’t feel that they can simply trade indefinitely and turn the match into a lung-busting trench warfare. The idea is to create that uncomfortable tension in their mind – should I go for it or should I be patient? To make them second-guess themselves, and so eventually implode.
The same thing happens to most of Novak Djokovic’s opponents in the end, and he uses a very similar strategy of banging those “cage” returns up the middle. It’s why Raducanu is able to keep putting these long sequences of games together: 11 in a row against Sorribes Tormo and Rogers, five in a row against Bencic and Sakkari. Because she is usually on top after the return, no matter who is serving.
Tennis statistics are often vague and woolly, as is the case on the subjective category of unforced errors (UE). But with that proviso, it’s worth noting that Raducanu’s UE tallies have been extraordinarily consistent across each the six rounds, never exceeding 18 in a single match nor dropping under 11.
It’s important not to be too passive, and thus let your opponent dictate. So Raducanu usually waits until she has been presented with a short “meatball” in the middle of the court. Or, alternatively, until her opponent has gone wide – opening up the angles as Travis mentioned above – but with insufficient pace or accuracy to make her really scramble. At that moment, she steps in and drives a winner up the line – a shot that she can play with equal proficiency on both wings. Tennis is a sport of risk and reward, and like the A-Level mathematician she is, Raducanu has the equation balanced perfectly.