The tennis player, who was eliminated this Wednesday in the first round of the US Open against Aliz Cornet (6-3, 6-3), has confessed that “I have to make a clean slate”.
Emma Raducanu He started his career backwards. In the US Open of 2021, being number 150 in the world, the British was the first tennis player to win a title of Grand Slam from the previous He was 18 years old, and more than burning stages, he had ignored them. What has come after has not been consecration but learning, a disappointing season in which he has not passed the second round in any major. Nor in Flushing Meadows, where she has fallen in the first round. After the loss to Aliz Cornet, Raducanu confessed to feeling liberated. “In a way I’m happy because I have to make a clean slate.”
Raducanu had denied the weight of expectations in the run-up to the US Open. He the pressure of knowing himself among the favorites, when a year ago he was not even among the covered ones. Or that after this frustrating year, plagued by injuries and poor results, a premature loss in New York could cost her more than 50 steps in the WTA ranking. “All this defending the title is a matter of the press,” she said. But it was the feeling he had conveyed during the North American tour.
Three weeks ago, after also losing in the first round in Toronto, Raducanu even confessed that he was looking forward to the US Open so he could move on with his career. That is the consolation that the British spoke of after the defeat against Cornet. “I’m not going to have a target on my back anymore. Now I have a chance to climb back up there“, he confessed at a press conference. Or as he said in Toronto, “to start over.”
looking for identity
As the US Open approached and the volume around her turned up, Emma Raducanu became more transparent about her time. Somehow, winning the title in her second Grand Slam tournament, at just 18 years old, was like starting the house from the roof, and the British is so at the beginning of the road that these weeks she has confessed that she is still not even sure which player she will win. I want to be. As if they would talk to her about defending the crown of a tournament that she came to through the service door a year ago and ended up winning.
“There are weeks where I serve very, very well. But then there are weeks where my serve disappears and I become more of a defensive play. Then I go back to being more offensive again… So I’m still looking for that balance“, he explained this month when he passed through Cincinnati, a tournament where he was already talking about that release. “I think, ‘what else, if you’re going to have a bad year anyway. And if mine comes after winning the US Open coming from the previous one, then fine.
Since his victory at Flushing Meadows, Raducanu has a balance of 15 wins and 19 losses. In her first full season as a professional, the British has lost in the second round of the Open the Australia, Roland Garros y Wimbledon, and first in the US Open, where he also had a problem with blisters on his hands. The projection of the WTA ranking predicts that it will fall from at least 11 to 80 in the world. Time to make a clean slate.
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