Totally Rad: 150th-ranked Emma Raducanu won an all-Cinderella US Open final with clear, uncomplicated tennis
Raducanu won 10 matches in Flushing Meadows—three in qualifying, seven in the main draw, all in straight sets. Only once did an opponent take her to 7-5 in a set.
With her title, Raducanu became the first qualifier to win a major in the Open Era, and the first British woman to win one in 44 years.
For 20 years, whenever we’ve talked about tennis players who “make it look easy,” we’ve talked about Roger Federer. Who would have guessed the Maestro’s successor in that regard would be an 18-year-old who is currently ranked 150th in the world, who has played just a handful of WTA tournaments, and who, a little less than a month ago, lost in the fourth round in a tournament in Landisville, Pa., population 2,117?
Emma Raducanu may never be able to match the balletic flow of Federer, but she has a knack for making tennis seem like an exceedingly simple game. You hit hard and deep, and use topspin for margin. You stand close to the baseline and command the court from there. You move the ball from corner to corner. You serve wide and hit your next shot into the open court. You send your returns deep and down the middle. You hit forcing shots, but not risky ones. And when you get to your third championship point at the US Open, and you feel a little tight, you hit an ace and hoist the trophy.
Those might seem like old-fashioned, overly basic lessons, but Raducanu showed how well they can still work over the last three weeks. In New York, she won 10 matches—three in qualifying, seven in the main draw, all in straight sets. Only once did an opponent take her to 7-5 in a set. With her title, Raducanu became the first qualifier to win a major in the Open era, and the first British woman to win one in 44 years.
“A surprise. Yeah, honestly, I just can’t believe it. A shock. Crazy. All of the above,” Raducanu said, while sounding as if she wasn’t particularly shocked by her success at all.
“To come this early, at this point in my career, I’ve only really been on tour for a month, two months since Wimbledon,” she said. “It’s pretty crazy to me.”
