Emma Raducanu had her critics in mind when she wrote “My own pace” on the camera lens before coming off court in Eastbourne.
Having just routed the former US Open champion Sloane Stephens in straight sets, Raducanu felt well placed to defend her recent scheduling – which had raised eyebrows when she declined to travel to Paris for last month’s French Open qualifying event.
“Even though I might get challenged or questioned for not playing certain tournaments like the French Open or the Olympics, I think that for me, that is just part of it,” Raducanu told reporters after her first-round win at the Rothesay International.
“[It’s about] doing things at my own speed and doing things how I want to, rather than how everyone else thinks is best for me, because ultimately me and the close few people around me only know what is actually best for me and my game.”
Raducanu had earned criticism by skipping qualifying at Roland Garros five weeks ago, even though her ranking (then just outside the world’s top 200) was high enough to earn a place in the draw.
There were also plenty of observers who queried her decision to skip the upcoming Olympic Games, which will be played on the same clay courts at Roland Garros in the south-west corner of Paris.
But Raducanu’s recent sequence of three grass-court wins in four matches has underlined the benefits of surface-specific training, while also boosting her back inside the world’s top-150 players. On this evidence, no one will want to draw her in the first round of Wimbledon, where she has received a wild card.
“I would say it’s just I’m going to do things on my own time, at my own pace, and I’m in no rush to do anything,” said Raducanu, who had said on Monday that she is rediscovering her love of tennis.
“Everything I’m doing and playing for now is for myself. Whether that’s tournament scheduling, whether that’s how much time I take off to train compared to compete, I think I’m just way more focused on my own lane and less susceptible to outside opinions or views.”
Exploring this change in mindset in more detail, Raducanu suggested that she had taken some time to adjust to her new life as a grand-slam champion after her stunning US Open win in 2021.
Indeed, Stephens herself had predicted as much after they met in Australia in January 2022, warning that “there’s going to be a lot of ups and downs. I think she, yeah, has just a lot to learn”.
After their latest encounter, Raducanu explained that “it’s pretty natural, becoming a different person overnight almost with the circ*mstances. Not necessarily myself”.
She added: “At such a young age, it’s easy to get caught up in it. I think at one point I was chasing, playing too many tournaments when I wasn’t ready, and then I was just picking up niggle after niggle in every tournament, because I never really gave myself any time to do the training and the work. I think that’s something I did a lot better this year.
“This year especially I have rushed less, played less, chased less, and it’s been working out for me, especially in this middle section of the year.
“There have been certain tournaments where I didn’t necessarily want to play, and it’s kind of showed in my game.
“I would say I’m pretty expressive. You can see when I’m very happy and excited, and you can see the opposite too. So I think that is just mainly picking my moments and smart scheduling for me.”
Raducanu will play second seed Jessica Pegula on Wednesday as she builds towards her third Wimbledon campaign. She was unable to perform at the All England Club last summer as a result of surgery on both wrists and one ankle.
Raducanu destroys Stephens at Eastbourne
Emma Raducanu trounced the former US Open champion Sloane Stephens with a devastating performance at Eastbourne. Afterwards, she rated her 6-4, 6-0 victory as her best effort on grass since she first burst into the national consciousness by reaching the fourth round of Wimbledon in 2021.
“I think my best performance on this surface was probably when I played the third round at Wimbledon [beating Sorana Cirstea that first summer],” said Raducanu, with admirable precision.
“And then probably the second round at Wimbledon [where she beat last year’s champion Marketa Vondrousova]. This was probably, like, third maybe.”
Admittedly, Stephens did rather give up the chase, dropping her intensity noticeably after going down a break in the second set. But Raducanu had been forced to earn her advantage after a tight and nervy first half-hour.
Once she had claimed the opening set, however, she was untouchable as she romped to victory in just 76 minutes. Her second-set performance delivered 13 clean winners to place against just one unforced error, leaving a demoralised Stephens counting down the seconds until she could finally sneak off the court.
The key game came at 4-4 in the first set, as Raducanu served and went 15-40 down. She saved the two break points brilliantly, first stranding Stephens with a perfectly judged drop shot – the only time she used this ploy in the match – and then banging down an ace.
After an extended to-and-fro, Raducanu held for 5-4 and then reeled off another seven games to march into the second round in fine fettle.
After concluding the win, which should carry her back into the world’s top 150 even if she does not win another match in Eastbourne, Raducanu performed an on-court interview in which she said: “For me, it was a case of adapting to the court, I have never played out on this Centre Court before and every grass court plays very differently.
“I think it was a very close first set and I was down all the way through in the first set but I managed to break. It was difficult as Sloane is super-athletic and in the first set especially she was making a lot of balls and counter-punching really well. So it took a lot to try to hit through her but I managed to figure it out in the second set.”
That tight game at 4-4 felt like it was the moment at which Raducanu found her form. She had been wayward early on, with her first-serve percentage hovering only just above 50 per cent and her forehand looking decidedly shaky.
But after several conversations with her coach Nick Cavaday at courtside, Raducanu began to time the ball better. It looked like Cavaday was encouraging her to play with more shape, and by the end she was stroking the ball around with confidence and fluency.
Her returns were particularly devastating, ruthlessly dissecting Stephens’s underpowered serve. It was a backhand return winner, hit up the line, which completed the rout.
Asked how much input Cavaday had supplied, Raducanu declined to offer a clear answer, but did explain that the heaviness of this year’s Slazenger balls had necessitated a change of tactics after that tricky first half-hour. Striking through the court had proved ineffective, so she switched to exploiting the angles more cannily.
“I think it was more just, like, ‘Okay, I need to figure out how to hit through these conditions,’” Raducanu said. “In the first set, she had so much time on the ball. I was just getting outplayed a little bit because my ball speed was probably too low.”
Asked whether the weight of balls could create any physical problems, given that she underwent double-wrist surgery last year, Raducanu said: “It is something that I just need to take care of and make sure I’m doing all my rehab. It’s not just me on the grass. A lot of the players pick up wrist, elbow, shoulder injuries or niggles, because it’s just slower and slower [so that] the viewers watch longer points.”
Raducanu’s win earns her a crack at Jessica Pegula, the world No5, who won last week’s WTA event in Berlin. Despite being the daughter of Terry Pegula, the billionaire Buffalo Bills owner, Pegula keeps such a low profile that she was able to catch the train down to Eastbourne ahead of this tournament.
On the court, she is a tough competitor who defeated Raducanu in their one previous meeting at Cincinnati in 2022.
