Emma Raducanu holds nerve to beat Leylah Fernandez in US Open final and achieve immortality

Emma Raducanu is the queen of New York after the most improbable major campaign ever staged. The schoolgirl of June is the major champion of September, and the youngest grand-slam winner since Maria Sharapova at Wimbledon in 2004.

Even Tim Henman swore in disbelief as Raducanu came through a magnificent tussle with her contemporary Leylah Fernandez of Canada to win by a 6-4, 6-3 scoreline. They could almost have been playing in the junior event, so tender are their years, but their game faces were ferocious.

It was a tale of blood, sweat and tears in the end, as Raducanu’s drive to the finish line was interrupted by a bizarre stoppage. Sliding across the baseline in a surfer’s crouch, she took the skin off her knee so deeply that blood flowed down her left knee.

At that point, the chair umpire told her to take a medical time-out and get the wound bandaged. She was standing at 30-40, break point down, as she served for the US Open title. And here was an unscheduled interruption so rare that Martina Navratilova admitted on Amazon Prime’s coverage that she had never seen it happen before.

Raducanu could so easily have lost her focus, or her absorption in the moment, as the trainer came out and spent four minutes applying disinfectant and a pad. Yet it was Fernandez who seemed the more disconcerted. She began arguing furiously with Clare Wood, the former British No1 who was the WTA supervisor for the match, about whether play should have continued. Indeed, she almost looked tearful at the delay.

This was already the most dramatic serving-out situation you could imagine. A four-minute delay as Raducanu faced break point? Unthinkable. And yet she coped with this as she had coped with everything else. “I fell somehow,” she told the crowd during the presentation ceremony, “and I thought that it was going to throw me off balance because I had to serve. I was just praying I didn’t double-fault.” Happily, her heavenly request was granted.

Five more rallies remained. Even though she saw off the immediate threat, Raducanu still had to defuse a second break point in this game, which she did with an extraordinary leap to reach an awkward lob and tap it down with a perfectly judged soft overhead winner. It only remained to pummel one last backhand up the line, then fire an ace out wide, and the job was done. Fernandez remained incensed by the stoppage, continuing to argue after the final point. But destiny could not be gainsaid.

Raducanu’s win took 1hr 51min, the longest time she had spent on court in any of her ten matches in New York, but still far from a marathon. She has not even dropped a set, in a run that recalls Iga Swiatek’s similar French Open campaign last year. None of her previous opponents had put up a fight, with the partial example of another left-hander – Mariam Bolkvadze – in the second round of qualifying, but Fernandez was courageous and defiant in defeat.

The early exchanges were riveting as both women faced early break points and were eventually unable to stave them off. By the time they sat down for the first time, with Raducanu leading 2-1, the match clock had already reached 23 minutes – which is as long as some sets – and they had fought out 34 points.

Both women were gasping for breath, but as soon as they return to their stations behind the baseline, Fernandez repeated her familiar drill of playing shadow swings towards the backdrop, as if the real shots she was hitting were not enough.

Fernandez found herself up on the ropes early, but she has been such a warrior throughout the tournament that coming from behind is normal for her. She looked to be moving into the ascendancy a couple of times in the middle of the set as she applied pressure to her opponent’s serve in the fifth and seventh games. But on each occasion Raducanu dipped into the reservoir of liquid hydrogen that she seems to carry to the court with her.

She was icy in the heat of battle as she delivered her set plays. The swinging serve out wide followed by a forehand line drive into the open court is her favourite panacea for all ills. She brings it out so often under pressure that her opponents must be starting to twig that it is coming, even after such a hasty introduction to Raducanu’s world. But it doesn’t make much difference when she finds perfect weight and placement on both shots – there’s still nothing you can do with the ball.

The players’ nervelessness was extraordinary. There was no sign that they were playing in public, let alone in front of millions of TV viewers including the Canadian prime minister and the Duchess of Cambridge. Their focus was exclusively down the court. They wanted to take each other down.

Fernandez is such an artist with the racket that Raducanu knew she had to play more aggressively than in her previous matches. The reward came in the final game of the first set as she staged an all-out assault on the Canadian city wall. The decisive point from Raducanu, a forehand drive up the line after she had worked Fernandez wide on the opposite wing, was so perfect that it could have been worked out on the tactical whiteboard with her coach Andrew Richardson. It snared the second break of the set for Raducanu, sealing a 6-4 advantage and sending Fernandez off the court for the obligatory bathroom break.

This was the cue for the intensity and the quality to ratchet up another level. Fernandez came out with more power and purpose in the second set. She staved off more break points in the second game, climbing out of a 0-40 hole, and then turned the tables to break Raducanu instead. She was 2-1 up, and Henman – watching from the sideline – had already forecast that the match was going to go the distance. That is the way Fernandez’s matches always go, isn’t it? She was coming in off a run of four straight three-setters, and a series of victims which included defending champion Naomi Osaka as well as the game’s biggest hitter – and world No 2 – Aryna Sabalenka.

The next game found Raducanu deliver perhaps the most extraordinary level that we have yet seen from her. She hurled herself into her returns. The indignity of being down in a set appeared to have riled her, because it has not happened at any stage of this entire campaign. The final point of this break was an almost contemptuous backhand return, struck sweetly and low crosscourt to give Ferrnandez not the slightest hope of laying racket or string on the ball.

And that seemed to break the dam, both of resistance inside Fernandez, proud scrapper that she is, and of self-restraint within Raducanu. The next couple of games felt like exhibition stuff. At one point, Raducanu slightly mishit an overhead – she doesn’t often hit overheads, because she prefers a drive volley – and picked up an easy point because the unexpected slowness of the ball left Fernandez unable to time her pass. She grinned. It was the middle of a key passage of play, in the US Open final, for an 18-year-old whose previous biggest title had been a $25,000 second-tier event in Pune, India. And she grinned. Explain that.

Within moments, it seemed, Raducanu had moved to 5-2 up. Fernandez still had one more show of defiance left in her as she toughed out two match points on her own serve. And then it was up to Raducanu to finish a surreal tournament with that final dramatic twist. Tennis has a new young heroine.

Raducanu 'loving life' after completing her New York fairytale

Emma Raducanu vowed to keep her free-swinging and carefree approach to tennis after pulling off one of the great sporting feats with victory at the US Open.

Winning grand slam titles is supposed to be hard - just ask Andy Murray - but his 18-year-old compatriot did not so much clear all the usual hurdles as sidestep them altogether, going home with the trophy in just her second major tournament.

That was an unprecedented feat, as was the fact she won 10 matches at the tournament after coming through qualifying, all of them in straight sets.

Raducanu's victory over fellow teenager Fernandez in the final made her the first British woman since Virginia Wade, who was watching from the stands, 44 years ago to win a slam singles title, and the first in New York since Wade in 1968.

Raducanu is yet to win a match on the WTA Tour and little over three months ago she was a full-time schoolgirl completing her A-levels, with competitive tennis having taken a back seat for more than a year.

But the teenager's extraordinary talent was evident from an early age and she showed in her run to the fourth round of Wimbledon this summer that a big future lay ahead.

Raducanu said: "I've always dreamed of winning a grand slam. You say, 'I want to win a grand slam', but to have the belief I did, and actually executing, winning a grand slam, I can't believe it.

"I first started when I was a little girl but I think the biggest thing that you have visions of, for me it was just winning, the winning moment, and going to celebrate with your team in the box. That's been playing in my head a couple of nights. I've fallen asleep to that."

Raducanu's run has been marked by an almost preternatural calmness, which included shutting out the excitement and hype her achievements have generated back home.

The teenager has been inundated with congratulatory messages, including from the Queen, but she said: "I still haven't checked my phone.

"I have absolutely no idea what's going on outside of the little world that we're in here. We've just been in the quiet room, just enjoying the moment, taking it all in. I think today we just really need to shut out from everything, just enjoy it as a team, because it was a team effort.

"I have no idea when I'm going home. I have no idea what I'm doing tomorrow. I definitely think it's the time to just switch off from any future thoughts or any plans, any schedule. I've got absolutely no clue. Right now, no care in the world, I'm just loving life."

Raducanu's team includes her parents, Ian and Renee, who were forced to watch their daughter on TV because of the continuing difficulties of international travel.

One of Raducanu's proudest achievements was impressing her dad, who has been the driving force behind the scenes.

She said: "I would have loved them to be here, and we can all celebrate together where they could be with me and experience the same things. But they're watching from home very proud.

"My dad, he said to me, 'You're even better than your dad thought', so that was reassurance. Tinie Tempah reference there. My dad is definitely very tough to please. But I managed to today."

Much was made of Raducanu's unfortunate retirement at Wimbledon with breathing difficulties but the teenager quickly put it behind her and used it as a springboard to this incredible feat.

She worked hard on being physically strong enough to compete at the top level and, through a series of matches first at lower-tier events and then at Flushing Meadows, made leaps forward with each one.

She said: "At the beginning of the grass courts, I was coming fresh off my exams. I had three weeks to practise before my first tournament. I just built up every single match, every single win.

"I thought Wimbledon was such an incredible experience. Fourth round, second week, I couldn't believe it. I thought, 'What a great achievement'.

"But I was still hungry. I was working hard after the grass. I didn't have much time off. With each match and tournament, I think I've really built in terms of confidence, in terms of my game, in terms of my ball striking. Everything came together today.

"I think to pull off some of the shots I did in the big moments when I really needed it was just an accumulation of everything I've learnt in the past five weeks."

This was the first all-teenage final this millennium, with Canadian Fernandez having pulled off a giant-killing run including victories over two former champions in Naomi Osaka and Angelique Kerber and top-five seeds Elina Svitolina and Aryna Sabalenka.

The 19-year-old looked the more nervous of the two initially and Raducanu surged into a 2-0 lead but Fernandez pegged her straight back and it was nip and tuck all through a brilliant first set until the 10th game.

The biggest difference between the two was perhaps Raducanu's exceptional returning, and she piled on the pressure before taking her fourth set point with a forehand winner down the line, raising her arms aloft and letting out a huge 'Come on'.

Four games in a row for Raducanu from an early break down in the second set took her to the brink of victory but Fernandez is a tenacious competitor and she saved two match points at 5-2 to force her opponent to try to serve it out.

The unsuccessful efforts of trying to prevent a break point resulted in Raducanu cutting her leg, requiring a medical timeout at the most inopportune of moments.

Fernandez was furious but Raducanu composed herself, saved two break points and clinched victory in fittingly clinical style with an ace.

Of the medical timeout, the teenager said: "I didn't actually want to stop because I thought it would disrupt my rhythm.

"But I couldn't play on. I wasn't allowed to because my knee was gushing with blood. I guess I just went over and was really trying to think what my patterns of play were going to be, what I was going to try to execute.

"Going out there facing a break point after a two or three-minute disruption isn't easy. I think I managed to really pull off the clutch plays when I needed to."

As well as a cheque for £1.8 million - dwarfing her previous earnings of £220,000 - Raducanu collects 2,000 ranking points and will soar up the standings from 150 to 23.

She has gone overnight from a rank outsider to one of the top names in the game but she swatted away any talk of pressure.

"I don't feel absolutely any pressure," she said. "I'm still only 18 years old. I'm just having a free swing at anything that comes my way. That's how I faced every match here in the States. It got me this trophy, so I don't think I should change anything."

Fernandez fought back tears on the podium but was widely praised for using the moment to commend the resilience of New Yorkers on the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

The 19-year-old admitted defeat stung, saying: "I think this loss, I'm going to carry it for a very long time. I think it will motivate me to do better in training, better for the next opportunity I get.

"But I'm very happy with myself, with the way I competed, and the play I played, the way I acted on court the past two weeks. I've improved a lot not only tennis wise but emotionally and mentally.

"Emma is a very good player. She's been playing incredibly these last few months with a lot of confidence. I unfortunately today did one too many mistakes. Hopefully we'll have many more tournaments together and many more finals."