To say that its “Plane tickets were already reserved for the end of the qualifications” ! But, finally, it is indeed with the cup on which are engraved all the names of the winners of the US Open that Emma Raducanu left on Saturday September 11, at the end of her three weeks in New York.
The Briton has achieved what no other tennis player has done before: clinching a Grand Slam title by first going through the qualifying phase. A fairy tale or almost for the young woman of 18, ranked at 150e world rank before the tournament and youngest finalist in a Grand Slam tournament after Russian Maria Sharapova, who was 17, in 2004, when she won the title at Wimbledon.
In the final, Emma Raducanu dominated in straight sets (6-4, 6-3) the other surprise guest, the Canadian Leylah Fernandez, a little older than her (19 years old) and 73e world player.
From start to finish of this US Open, Emma Raducanu looked ten years older than her age. The Briton has simply not lost a single set in ten games played. And she was able to resist the pressure that had led her to forfeit in the round of 16 of the last Wimbledon tournament, in July, struggling to breathe against Australian Ajla Tomljanovic (6-4, 3-0) .
“My greatest achievement has been to manage to think of absolutely nothing other than my game plan and how to execute it. I was focused on that. That’s the thing I’m most proud of, because that’s what helped me win this title ”, Raducanu explained after the meeting.
She “will be world number 1 and multi-titled in Grand Slam”
However, the task was not easy against Leylah Fernandez. More tense than in previous matches, the Briton committed a lot of unforced errors (25 in total on the match). In the second act, if she initially flew to lead 5-2, she failed to convert her first two match points on Leylah Fernandez’s serve. She was even forced to take a medical time out in the middle of the game after grating her left knee on a slip!
A few minutes later, however, she could collapse with joy: like Roger Federer, she won the match with a final ace. On Monday, the one who was born in Canada to a Romanian father and a Chinese mother (before moving to England at the age of 2) is the news 23e world player.
Described by Naomi Cavaday, her former trainer, at the microphone of the BBC, as ” the biggest worker [jamais] met, and it has always been ”, Emma Raducanu is now presented as the possible future of the women’s circuit, in search of a new stable headliner.
” She has the thing, the one you saw the first time watching Nadal or Djokovic ”, ex-world number 1 Martina Navratilova said on Amazon Prime. For Greg Rusedski, finalist of the US Open in 1997, she “Will be world number 1 and multi-titled in Grand Slam”. The person concerned considers that “Now is not the time to think about the future, to plan anything”.