A tearful Emma Raducanu admitted she felt “sad” and would go “back to the drawing board” after suffering an agonising first-round exit at the US Open to continue her winless drought at Flushing Meadows.
The 21-year-old stunned the world three years ago when she won the title in her third senior tournament, but she had failed to win a match in New York since in 2022 and 2024 while missing last year’s championship through injury.
Raducanu’s latest setback came on Tuesday night at the hands of Sofia Kenin – another member of the “one-slam wonder” club – with the 2020 Australian Open winner securing a 6-1, 3-6, 6-4 victory.
“I’m just going to go back to the drawing board and train and analyse where I went wrong and try and improve for the rest of the season,” a tearful Raducanu said afterwards.
“Obviously, the slams are over for this year, but it’s not actually that long until Australia comes around again.”
Tim Henman, a long time supporter of Raducanu, defended her decision to take a three-and-a-half-week break from the match court after her quarter-final loss to Paula Badosa in Washington on August 4.
Raducanu, who wiped away tears in her post match press conference, acknowledged that she had mismanaged her schedule on the way into the US Open.
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But ahead of her campaign, Henman said: “There’s no rush [to play tournaments].
“She’s still only 21 because she’s been around for so long but when she had the surgeries, two on her wrists and one on her foot, that was actually a blessing in disguise as it really gave her a step back and really look at her general fitness and resilience to build the foundation and compete on tour.
“When you look at the events that she’s played, she’s played some great tennis.”
Former British No 1 Laura Robson suggested that Raducanu lacked rhythm as a reason behind the defeat, although gave credit to Kenin for deploying the right tactics to achieve that.
“Not a performance that any of us expected from Sofia but the fact that she was clutch when it mattered most,” said Robson.
“Raducanu did her best to turn that score around and we saw a really solid second set when she just found some rhythm finally.
“But Sofia Kenin didn’t allow her any rhythm, that was the tactic today. Just to get Raducanu not feeling good off the baseline and want to dictate the play in a match up that she felt good about.”
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