From schoolgirl to superstar, the six months that turned Emma Raducanu's world upside down
Swaddled in her overcoat on a late April day, her calculus revision on her lap, Emma Raducanu bears the grave expression of an 18-year-old immersed in her A-levels. For most her age, merely surviving this rite of passage is an achievement in itself. But she has laid the foundation for a set of results that defy comparison. It is not just that she will soon be toasting an A* in maths, plus an A in economics, but that her bravura tennis will transform her, during the same summer, from the world No 338 into a US Open finalist. Even for a sport harbouring its share of wunderkinds, she is rewriting the standard for precocity.
It took Phileas Fogg 80 days for his name to be known around the world. Raducanu has needed only 73 since she first stepped on court at Wimbledon. One moment, she is racked with the usual exam tensions in Bromley, any grand slam ambitions in abeyance. The next, she is absorbing the adulation on Arthur Ashe Stadium, the US plaudits multiplying as rapidly as her commercial endorsements.
Monday April 26, 138 days before US Open final - A-level study
It is a path that has involved some exotic detours, from overnight celebrity at Wimbledon to an abrupt retirement as she struggled to breathe, from a guest turn at the Euros to a poster-girl debut at a Challenger event in Chicago. Now, in New York, we see the almost unthinkable encore. Rarely can any coming of age have unfurled at such warp speed.
The temptation is to imagine that Raducanu burst fully-formed into the tennis firmament, her first Wimbledon win against Vitalia Diatchenko of Russia signalling the supernova to come. In truth, the scripting of this drama was far more precarious. Originally, she did not even receive a Wimbledon wildcard, merely an entry into qualifying that she upgraded with a sliding-doors victory in Nottingham over Hungary’s Timea Babos. But for that result, she could easily have succumbed to an anonymous exit at Roehampton. Instead, the starting gun was fired on a ride that has grown wilder by the day.
Wednesday June 30, 73 days before US Open final - first Wimbledon match
Raducanu enraptured her audience at the All England Club. Quite apart from the flourish with which she cast aside Marketa Vondrousova, who had reached a French Open final, she had the priceless gift of not taking herself too seriously. Where Wimbledon crowds had once struggled to warm to Andy Murray for his perceived surliness, they took instantly to the teenager who paired a ferocious game with a relish for the spotlight. Her third-round dispatch of Romania’s Sorana Cirstea will live long in the minds of those who witnessed it, the rarest example of a British player who thrived off the pressure.
Thursday July 1, 72 days before US Open final - Wimbledon round two... on court 12
And yet all the greatest theatre requires an element of darkness to intrude. For Raducanu, it arrived in the gloaming of Manic Monday, in a match delayed until primetime by a four-hour men’s marathon. As she held her stomach early in the second set against Australia’s Ajla Tomljanovic, before leaving Court No 1 in anguish, there was almost indecent haste to pronounce on her fate. John McEnroe suggested she had been overwhelmed by the magnitude of the occasion, a view she clarified by pointing to a breathing issue. Either way, her VIP appearances at Wembley and Silverstone suggested the problem did not derail her so long.
Monday July 5, 68 days before US Open final - Wimbledon run ends
The post-Wimbledon reckoning can be harsh for breakout British stars, their fleeting fame curtailed by journeys to forsaken outposts of the US hardcourt circuit. Raducanu seemed destined for a similar fate, given her ranking remained low. And yet she approached her travels with the same happy abandon as a giddy gap-year student. Even as her profile has soared in New York, she has used her press conferences to joke how this is the longest time she has been away from her parents.
Wednesday July 7, 66 days before US Open final - taking in England v Denmark at Euro 2020
Feted though she might have been at home, Raducanu had offered little sense that she would conjure an instant repeat, never mind cut a swathe through a stacked major draw. But as her momentum built, the sense grew that her nerveless filletings of higher-ranked opponents meant more than the flush of youthful exuberance.
Tuesday July 27, 46 days before US Open final - arrival in the US
She demolished Spain's Sara Sorribo Torres, a wily and versatile adversary, for the loss of one game. She swept past Belinda Bencic, fresh from winning Olympic gold for Switzerland, with barely a backwards glance. On Saturday night she faces an examination undreamt-of even a week ago, a US Open against fellow teenager Leylah Fernandez, whose surge to prominence rivals her own. As a measure of how improbable the match-up is, consider this: both young women have been vanquished this summer by Harriet Dart.
Wednesday August 18, 24 days before US Open final - first WTA win on hard court
Through it all, Raducanu betrays not a shred of hubris or entitlement. One key reason for her embrace by New Yorkers is the mood she projects on court. Within minutes of her dispatch of Maria Sakkari, she was gravitating towards the fans for selfies. She has vowed to contest every match on Ashe as if it is her last, and it shows. While she has been splashed over the front cover of Vogue this week – quite the accolade for a character once stricken with shyness – she cultivates an image that is generous, gregarious, relatable.
Thursday September 9, two days before US Open final - place booked
Already, the transformation from schoolgirl to superstar is complete. Irrespective of whether she defeats Fernandez, she has the LA PR firms and the Manhattan talk-show bookers falling at her feet. But the true wonder of her tale is that in 73 days, she has cemented her place in sporting folklore for posterity. That is one feat that surely requires no spin.
