Emma Raducanu gave a damning assessment of her own game after losing to Anastasia Potapova in the second round of the Australian Open.
The 28th seed had been hoping to set up another clash with world number one Aryna Sabalenka but she faded from a promising position and fell to a 7-6 (3) 6-2 defeat.
Raducanu has spoken positively about the work she is doing with coach Francisco Roig, who she hired last summer, but the 23-year-old does not feel she has found the right formula on court.
Asked about her plans now, she said: ‘I think I’m going to take a few days, get back home and try and just re-evaluate my game a bit.
‘Watch it back, see where I can improve. What I have been feeling and also what is visually apparent. I definitely want to feel better on certain shots before I start playing again.
Emma Raducanu is out of the Australian Open after a second-round defeat in Melbourne
World No 55 Anastasia Potapova saw off Raducanu, who suffered with a number of errors
‘I want to be playing a different way, and I think the misalignment with how I’m playing right now and how I want to be playing is something that I just want to work on.
‘At the end of the day, I just want to hit the ball to the corners and hard. I feel like I’m doing all this variety, and it’s not doing what I want it to do. I need to just work on playing in a way more similar to how I was playing when I was younger.’
In the four-and-a-half years since she won the US Open, Raducanu has turned to many different voices in an effort to establish herself at the top of the game but without finding any real consistency in results.
The period through last spring and summer, when she was without a permanent coach but working with former British number one Mark Petchey, offered real promise but she has taken something of a step back since.
She again found herself off court during pre-season because of physical struggles, this time a foot injury, and that is certainly a mitigating factor in an underwhelming three weeks Down Under.
Raducanu will head home having won just two of her five matches, and there was little positive to take from her performance against Russian-turned-Austrian Potapova.
While both struggled with the windy conditions initially, Potapova, ranked 55, settled towards the end of the first set, fighting her way back from 5-3 down.
Raducanu made a host of errors, particularly off the forehand, and looked despondent during a second set that quickly got away from her.
‘I thought it was a very difficult match with the conditions in the first set,’ she said. ‘I didn’t feel like I dealt with it particularly well.
‘I still had some chances in the first set but, nevertheless, just one of those days you don’t feel too good on the court. But credit to her. She found a better solution in the first set, and then really played better, I thought, in the second.
Raducanu admitted she ‘wasn’t ready’ for the Australian Open – but didn’t regret entering
‘I don’t want to give myself too much of a hard time because I know my preparation going into this tournament. I kind of have to leave with my head held high because of the matches I’ve had here.
‘I didn’t even know at the beginning if I would be coming to Australia, so it’s a positive in that sense.
‘I don’t regret the decision, because I got to come and play a slam here. Even if I wasn’t very ready, I think I had a good three weeks Down Under on and off the court.
‘I just need to take it for what it is, be pragmatic, and go back and keep working. The season is still quite long so, hopefully, if I stay healthy, do the right things, then it will start falling into place.’
Raducanu is next scheduled to play in her father’s home country of Romania at the Transylvania Open in Cluj-Napoca beginning on February 1.
