Emma Raducanu has failed to match her 2024 Wimbledon run, this time exiting at just the third round stage.
However, the manner of this year’s exit is vastly different to last year’s, having been knocked out by the world number one and overwhelming favourite to win the title, Aryna Sabalenka.
Heading into the clash, few even gave the 22-year-old a chance, yet she swiftly proved them wrong by pushing her opponent to the brink.
In both the first and second sets, she found herself a break up, yet lacked that killer instinct to deliver the final blow and ward off a fightback.
And yet, it was arguably what she did before Wimbledon even began that was the true missed opportunity.
Emma Raducanu missed a huge chance to be seeded at Wimbledon
After all, heading into the grass-court season, Emma Raducanu had put herself in a perfect position to be seeded for Wimbledon.
At last, the 2021 US Open champion had found a consistent run of form and fitness, and as such her ranking was slowly rising.
Queen’s, Eastbourne and Berlin marked the three chances she had for a deep run to cement that seeded spot, and as she claimed the British number one mantle, it really felt like Raducanu was on track to do it.
That was, until she was disappointingly defeated by Qinwen Zheng at Queen’s, despite the Chinese player having never really impressed on grass, before then losing early to Maya Joint in Eastbourne.
Suffering a reaggravation of her back injury, she was then forced to pull out of Berlin, thus making her push to improve her rankings irrelevant.
Raducanu had missed her opportunity and was at the mercy of pure luck in the Wimbledon draw; luck she did not get.
Following her loss to Sabalenka, Raducanu has been told exactly what she must improve to get one step closer to competing with players of this calibre more regularly.
Emma Raducanu was getting better and better at this Wimbledon
And yet, it’s such a shame that a match against Sabalenka came so early in the event, given how Raducanu was undeniably building towards something at the All-England Club this year.
She cruised through her first-round match against 17-year-old Mimi Xu and was rewarded with a clash against the 2023 Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova.
Few predicted her to win as comfortably as she did, sweeping the Czech star aside in one of her best performances of the year.
Raducanu then, as we now know, pushed Sabalenka close, but just didn’t have enough on the night.
Had she managed to secure that seeded spot, perhaps a clash with the undisputed best women’s player on earth might not have come so soon, allowing her to gather steam, get further than the third round, and then even have the momentum to overcome someone of this stature.
