As Emma Raducanu lined up to compete in the Australian Open for the first time as a professional, reminders of her inexperience were ever present. Despite being a grand slam champion, the encounter with Sloane Stephens marked her first match against a grand slam champion. In the end she was forced to play three sets for only the third time in her career at the top level.
It took a gripping hour and 45 minutes filled with tense, attritional exchanges but Raducanu withstood a second-set barrage from the 2017 US Open champion in a turbulent match to win 6-0, 2-6, 6-1 and reach the second round.
“I definitely wanted to go out there and start playing aggressively and start putting my game on the court,” said Raducanu. “I felt that I was just really enjoying my time here, especially like going out to practise earlier, I had quite a few people watching. So I was really enjoying it and I think the crowd that stayed pretty late, we were having a good time. I was feeding off that, for sure.”
Raducanu swept into the match with high intensity and energy from the start and she accompanied her successes with big fistpumps and loud screams of “c’mon!” As she smothered Stephens with her return of serve, taking the ball early and refusing to relinquish the baseline, Stephens was barely present and she initially offered little resistance.
Raducanu finished how she started, bulldozing through the final set and on her victory ended her night by dropping her racket and covering her face in awe. “It was just a sense of pride,” she said.
“I had some adversity with having Covid and then last week so I was just so proud to turn it around so fast. I think of my level last week – just seven days ago – and it was not good before the match in Sydney. And today I was pretty pleased with it so I was very happy with the way I turned it around.”
When asked about her first experience against a grand slam champion, Raducanu said she is viewing this season as a crucial step in her learning process, wherever it takes her. “I think 2022 is all about learning for me. Being in those situations of winning a set and then having to fight in a decider is definitely just all accumulating into a bank of experience that I can tap into later on down the line.”
Stephens said any similarities between them stop at the tournament they both won. She described Raducanu as “carrying a whole country”, a reference to the pressure she faces in Great Britain, which is a completely different situation from her own.
“I was talking to someone in the locker room and I’m like: ‘We’ll be here when she comes down,’ but not Emma, but just in general. It all is like a cycle and learning how to deal with it early on is the best way to handle it just because there’s always a lot of ups and downs in tennis.”
Backing up big results is a universal challenge and earlier in the day, Leylah Annie Fernandez, whom Raducanu beat in the final in New York in September, lost in the first round here to an Australian wildcard, Maddison Inglis. Fernandez has had considerably more experience at the top level. Raducanu took a nice step forward.
There are other things to learn, such as simply when to go to sleep. Raducanu, 19, finished her match at midnight and her press duties did not conclude until well after 1.30am. “It’s way past my bedtime right now,” she said. “That it’s something I’m also learning about, myself and what works for me, dealing with those late finishes and the night matches and maybe not being able to get to sleep as early because of the adrenaline you’re running on.”
Comments (…)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion