In the four years that have passed since Emma Raducanu conjured one of the most remarkable triumphs in sport by winning the US Open, we have become conditioned to treating her as a hard-luck story.
It has sometimes felt as if she has become someone that bad things happen to: hounded by a stalker, bedevilled by injuries, unable to establish a rapport with a coach, damned with faint praise, accused of ruining Andy Murray’s Wimbledon farewell.
Much of it has been unfair. Much of it has been borne from foisting a set of unrealistic expectations on a young woman who, it has sometimes seemed, had been condemned to live her career backwards, a tennis version of Benjamin Button.
When she walked on to Centre Court on Wednesday evening to play her second-round match against 2023 Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova, the lurking fear was that this would be the next instalment in a damned quest to rediscover the joy of the life-changing triumph she experienced when she was 18.
That was why what happened next felt so wonderfully uplifting. Instead of succumbing to those prophecies of doom and to the back injury that has been troubling her, Raducanu turned back the clock to a time when her tennis was carefree and alive with positive possibility.
‘When you play on Centre Court,’ she said later, ‘you forget about all the ups and downs of the last four years.’ Then she paused and smiled. ‘Mainly downs,’ she added. ‘But this was one of the best matches I’ve played in a long time.’
Emma Raducanu was all smiles after defeating Marketa Vondrousova 6-3, 6-3 on Cente Court
She looked unburdened and as if she had come to terms with the hand that she has been dealt
Her 6-3, 6-3 demolition of the Czech player, who beat her in Abu Dhabi earlier this year and won the Berlin Open 11 days ago, was one of her best and most assured performances since her triumph, as an unheralded qualifier, at Flushing Meadows in 2021.
This was Raducanu unbound. This was a player who looked as if she was having fun again at last. This was a player who seemed unburdened and who has come to terms with the hand that has been dealt her.
And when the crowd groaned when it was mentioned to her by the on-court interviewer after the match that she would be playing world No1 Aryna Sabalenka in the third round on Friday, Raducanu played along.
‘All I can do is control my side of the court,’ she said. ‘I guess there’s no pressure on me at all.’
The crowd cheered and applauded and Raducanu broke into a giggle. It felt as though a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. And, sure, the odds are that she will lose to Sabalenka, who is the dominant player in the women’s game at the moment and will be a formidable opponent. Nor does Raducanu have a promising record against top-10 players: in 15 matches against them, she has won only three.
But then that is Raducanu’s x-factor, the thing that means you can never write her off: she has done the impossible before. Maybe she can do it again. She played beautifully here against Vondrousova, who became the first unseeded player to win the ladies’ singles at Wimbledon two years ago.
In the battle of the most unlikely champions in women’s tennis, only one looked as if they might yet revisit past glories.
From the first game, Raducanu provided echoes of the time when the world lay at her feet. She drove a fine cross-court forehand winner past her opponent, who then began her own first service game with a double fault. It was the first of many from Vondrousova, who could not find any consistency in her play and made far too many unforced errors to turn the match into a close contest.
Raducanu has booked a third-round clash with world No1 Aryna Sabalenka on Friday
When Raducanu broke her serve with a brilliant running backhand passing shot to go 4-2 up, it was not a surprise.
Raducanu was commanding on both wings but her backhand was particularly imperious and, after a series of breaks, she took the first set in 38 minutes. Nor did she relax.
In the second point of the second set, she crushed a backhand return past Vondrousova. She hit it so sweetly, her opponent barely moved as it flew past her.
Raducanu broke serve in the third game of the set and then saved two break points to move into a 3-1 lead. She chased everything down. She defended for her life. She stayed in points she had no right to win.
‘That was the best point I’ve ever played,’ she said of an improbable retrieval of a Vondrousova smash that she followed up with a brilliant cross-court backhand which left the Czech floundering on the baseline.
As Raducanu closed in on victory, she engineered a fine rally where she dragged Vondrousova all over the court before closing out the point with a forehand cross-court passing shot that left her opponent flat-footed at the net.
‘That was the best I have seen her play since she won the US Open,’ said two-time Grand Slam winner Tracy Austin. ‘Her tennis was sensational. The return of service was phenomenal.’
In her press conference after the match, Raducanu said she was going to take time to savour what she had achieved before she began to prepare in earnest for the test against Sabalenka that lies ahead.
In everything she said and the way she answered questions, openly and brimming with positivity, she looked like a player who is starting to come to terms with that victory in New York and the change it wrought upon her life.
She spoke of ‘getting to the top’ again. She spoke as if she is finally allowing herself to believe that winning the US Open may not have been an ending after all, but a beginning.
