Emma Raducanu: When losing is a liberation

• First round Muguruza and Badosa start with victory at the US Open

Emma Raducanu

started her career backwards.

At the 2021

, she being number 150 in the world, the British was the first tennis player to win a

from the previous one.

She was 18 years old, and more than burning stages, she had ignored them.

What she has come after her has not been the consecration but the apprenticeship, a disappointing season in which she has not made it past the second round in any major.

Nor in Flushing Meadows, where she fell in the first round.

After her defeat against

, Raducanu confessed to feeling liberated from her.

"In a way I'm happy because I have to make a clean slate."

Raducanu had denied the weight of expectations in the run-up to the US Open.

The pressure of being among the favorites, when a year ago he wasn't even among the covered ones.

Or that after this frustrating year, plagued by injuries and poor results,

.

"All this defending the title is a press thing," she said.

But it was the feeling she had conveyed during the North American tour.

Three weeks ago, after also losing in the first round in Toronto, Raducanu even confessed that he was looking forward to the US Open so he could move on with his career.

That is the consolation that the British spoke of after the defeat against Cornet.

"I am no longer going to have a target on my back.

," she confessed at a press conference.

Or as she put it in Toronto, "to start over."

looking for identity

As the US Open approached and the volume around her rose, Emma Raducanu was more transparent about her time.

Somehow, winning the title in her second Grand Slam tournament, at just 18 years old, was starting the house from the roof, and the British is so far along the way that these weeks she has confessed that she is still not even sure which player I want to be.

As if they would talk to her about defending the crown of a tournament that she came to through the service door a year ago and ended up winning.

"There are weeks where I serve very, very well. But then there are others where my serve disappears and I become more of a defensive play. Then again I go more offensive... So I

. " , he explained this month as he passed through Cincinnati, a tournament where he was already talking about that release.

"I think, 'what does it matter, if you're going to have a bad year anyway. And if mine comes after winning the US Open coming from qualifying, fine.'

Since his victory at Flushing Meadows, Raducanu has a record of

.

In her first full season as a professional, the British woman has lost in the second round of the

,

and

, and in the first round of the US Open, where she also had a problem with blisters on her hands.

The projection of the WTA ranking predicts that she will fall from at least 11 to 80 in the world.

Time to make a clean slate.

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