The Francisco Roig era of Emma Raducanu’s career began with a positive performance as the 30th seed defeated Olga Danilovic of Serbia 6-3, 6-2 on a sweltering day in the second round at the Cincinnati Open.
Raducanu’s recent progress has been driven by her reliability against inferior opponents and she is now 19-4 against lower-ranked players over the past year. Having spent much of the past four years struggling to string together wins, she is now as match-tough as she has ever been.
She said: “You always feel a little bit of nerves before the first round, but I think that overall, I’m approaching everything in a lot more calm way, mature, and I think I’m trusting a lot more the work I’m doing behind the scenes. I know I’m putting a lot of hours in, and it takes some of the pressure off of the results.”
A far greater test awaits Raducanu, who had received a first-round bye owing to her status as a seeded player, in round three. She will next face the world No 1, Aryna Sabalenka, after the Belarusian defeated Marketa Vondrousova 7-5, 6-1 on Saturday night.
Raducanu was supported from the crowd by Roig, who consistently offered tactical advice from his position next to the baseline. Although their partnership is still less than a week old, she believes Roig has already made a positive difference to her game. “I think the way I’m playing, the movements of my shot, improving the quality of my shot,” she said. “There were four or five points where I did something that we were working on, and it’s always really satisfying and rewarding when you hit a shot and you’ve worked on it in practice. So I think I’m going to improve a lot, hopefully doing the work day in, day out.”
After their first conversations about her game, Raducanu and Roig quickly agreed that the main focus of their work is improving her overall level. “It’s just, like, the level needs to be better. In a good way, not in a negative way. It’s just calling it how it is,” she said. “And I’m very like that. I’m very kind of factual and I don’t necessarily like fluffing something up. I think that’s where we get on really well and we understand each other. Just in general, everything is like: ‘We need to improve. We need to get every shot better.’ And that’s exciting, because I feel like there’s a lot of potential to go and I don’t think I’m near it.”
During her one previous appearance in Cincinnati two years ago, where she dismantled Serena Williams in the final month of her career and Victoria Azarenka in consecutive matches, Raducanu showed that the faster courts here suit her well. This time, however, she had the oppressive heat to deal with. The temperature on Champions Court rose to 30C (85F) with considerable humidity.
Raducanu opened the match poorly with three loose unforced errors and a double fault to drop her opening service game to love. Constant aggression from Danilovic, an ultra-offensive lefty with a big serve and forehand but poor movement, allowed the Serb to dictate the majority of the early exchanges. In the opening games, Raducanu was forced to scrap behind the baseline, chasing down balls while trying to elicit unforced errors from her opponent for much of the first set.
However, Raducanu’s depth of service return was brilliant from the beginning, consistently refusing Danilovic the short balls she was looking for behind her first serve. Raducanu also defended well, maintaining her depth and patiently looking for opportunities to take the ball early and attack. In the face of this intensity, Danilovic’s error count rose throughout.
After struggling on serve early on, Raducanu gradually grew in confidence. From her uncertain position behind the baseline, she ended a composed, efficient performance striking the ball early and putting Danilovic’s laboured movement under constant pressure as she eased into the third round.
One year after missing most of the North American swing, including the Cincinnati Open, before her first round loss at Flushing Meadows, Raducanu is in quite a different position. Her run on the hard courts began with two positive showings, reaching the semi-finals of the WTA 500 event in Washington before winning two matches last week in Montreal. Now she will have another opportunity to test her level against one of the world’s best.
Elsewhere, Iga Swiatek, the Wimbledon champion, continued her excellent form by easing into the third round with a composed 6-1, 6-4 win over Anastasia Potapova. Jannik Sinner, the men’s No 1, returned to competition for the first time since his Wimbledon triumph with an easy 6-1, 6-1 win over Daniel Elahi Galán.
