Realistic Emma Raducanu isn’t expecting to “play US Open tennis every week”
Reigning US Open champion Emma Raducanu has spent a year coming to terms with the fact that she can’t always play the same level of tennis as she did during the 3 weeks that saw her win through in qualifying and then take the title at the 2021 US Open
Emma Raducanu faces the biggest challenge of her young career in a few weeks time when she will try to defend her career changing title in the women’s singles at the US Open but she’s arrived at the conclusion that it woul be unrealistic for her to expect to play her best all the time.
And in fact she’s revealed that even during that incredible run in New York last year she wasn’t always playing her best with at ;east two matches of the 10 she won where she really struggled.
Raducanu was speaking during her run to the quarter finals of the Washington Open when she said,
“Watching my matches at the US Open (in 2021), there were times that I was coming out with some outrageous shots. Sometimes in your career you feel like everything is automatic, you can go for whatever shot you want and it’s going to land.
“Those weeks don’t come by very often. You might have one or two a year. I was lucky that I had three like pretty much when it mattered really.
“But I wasn’t always playing perfect tennis. In my qualifying, I remember scrapping through some, my second-round qualifying match, and in my fourth round I remember I was so nervous in the first set and didn’t necessarily feel like I was playing great, but it’s definitely a lot about holding your nerve on those sort of matches in big courts.
“I think that’s something I did extremely well throughout the US Open, but I have just accepted that I’m not going to feel like that every week. It’s more challenging and more fun when you come through a win like that and a win when you are not necessarily feeling great because you know that there is room to improve.”
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