At the start of a new season in January 2022, Emma Raducanu’sfirst full year on the WTA tour, she was swimming in doubt. Not only was she trying to take her next steps forward after a life-changing summer, her off-season had been ravaged by Covid-19, which forced her off the court for weeks in December. In her first match of the season, she found herself up against Elena Rybakina in Sydney. She left the court having lost 6-0, 6-1.
That first encounter between the players was a good representation of the myriad difficulties Raducanu would navigate over the next few years: the pressure from her sudden rise, her underpowered game against the best players in the world and the fact that there was always another physical issue around the corner.
On the eve of another meeting between the Briton and Kazakhstani, the British No 1’s form underscores the quiet, consistent progress she has finally made in recent months. Raducanu has lost just six games in her first two matches, against Ena Shibahara and Janice Tjen, and is playing quality tennis, serving confidently and pressuring her opponents by taking the ball early and forcing herself inside the baseline.
However, her two opponents were also qualifiers who have never broken the top 100. Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion, represents an enormous step up in quality and class. The 26-year-old is the best server in the women’s game, leading the tour in service games won, service points won and aces. She backs up her serving prowess with some of the cleanest groundstrokes in the sport, generating such easy pace off both sides. As she showed with her demolition of Aryna Sabalenka two weeks ago in Cincinnati, nobody is safe from being hit off the court when Rybakina is in full flow.
Raducanu’s decision to hire Francisco Roig was rooted in trying to improve her game in order to be better equipped to counter the elite players and biggest ball strikers. Now she will have another chance to measure her progress. “I do want to see how my game suits and fits against the top,” said Raducanu. “I still think I have a long way to go, but I think I have been making steps towards getting closer and narrowing that gap. I think I have to take confidence from my matches against Aryna in Cincy and Wimby.”
As Raducanu tackles one of the toughest opponents in her draw, Cameron Norrie finds himself up against the greatest player in any men’s draw that has ever existed. Just a few months after their meeting in the fourth round of the French Open, Norrie will face off against Novak Djokovic for a seventh time.
This has been an eventful summer for Norrie, who returned to his favourite surface during the North American hard court swing hopeful that his excellent quarter-final run at Wimbledon would propel him to greater heights but he instead repeatedly struggled with his physical condition in the heat. While his durability has long been one of his biggest assets, for once it was a problem.
Norrie addressed those issues with a tough pre-US Open training block in the brutal heat at Texas Christian University, his alma mater, and he has performed well in New York. At the end of a tense, attritional four-hour match against Francisco Comesaña on Wednesday, he managed his nerves well and found a way to close out the match in four sets to reach the third round.
Norrie has lost all of his six meetings with Djokovic, winning only two sets, and their matches have shown that he simply does not have the firepower to trouble the Serb when he is at his best. However, he should head into this match-up believing this is his best opportunity to push Djokovic to the limit.
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“I will say the chances of getting better as the years get on, I would not say by much,” said Norrie. ”But the level he brings, the competitiveness he brings is crazy. Every time I’ve played him, he’s changing his tactics and making it really difficult for me to play. So I’m just ready for anything. Him to play unreal. Him to play not great. Him to be stopping the match for something and then playing really good. I think he’s so, so good at competing and tactics. He’s amazing. So I’m going to have to be ready for anything and I want to just beat him with tennis and physicality.”
This US Open is Djokovic’s first tournament since Wimbledon after opting to prioritise his time with his family and his suboptimal preparation has clearly played a part in his two unimpressive performances as he closed out Learner Tien and Zachary Svajda in four sets. Djokovic struggled physically in his first round match against Tien, who repeatedly dragged him into long, attritional exchanges. While Norrie will attempt to exploit the 38-year-old’s waning physicality even more effectively than those before him, it remains to be seen if Djokovic will allow him to get close.
