MELBOURNE – Looking to make up for lost time, Emma Raducanu will have a great chance against Iga Swiatek in the third round of the Australian Open.
‘It’s going to be a great shot of adrenaline,’ said the British 18-year-old US Open champion.
The reigning world No. 61 on Thursday made it past the second round of one of the four majors for the first time since her successful run to New York 2021.
Amid this resurgence, the Brit has a clear plan. “I think this year I’m approaching things holistically, in the sense of just having good people around me, maintaining a positive outlook. I’m quite ruthless in terms of prioritising myself and staying focused. I don’t have time for anything that might disrupt that,” she said in a press conference.
The paths of these two stars have diverged dramatically since they both entered the history books as teenage Grand Slam champions.
While the Pole added four more Grand Slam titles to her collection and spent 125 weeks as world number one, Raducanu endured a relentless cycle of losses and injuries. “Sometimes I think I wish I’d never won the US Open,” she admitted to The Sunday Times in 2023, citing a lack of maturity and naivety in navigating an ecosystem “full of sharks.”
Now, the two will face off for a spot in the fourth round of Melbourne. Raducanu sees it as a major opportunity. “I’m looking forward to going out there and testing my game against the best, because ultimately, you play tennis and live for these moments,” she said. They’ve played three times, with the four-time Roland Garros champion winning all encounters without dropping a set.
“I’m working on building the foundations of my game, and everyone progresses at their own pace,” Raducanu noted on Thursday in Melbourne, reflecting on years that blended her meteoric success in fashion and advertising, intense media scrutiny, and the injuries and surgeries that kept her off the court. Four years after her New York triumph, she seems to have found her compass to reignite her career.
In Australia, she also reflected on the divergent paths taken by two of the most prominent icons in women’s tennis today. “She was competing from a very young age, and my hours compared to hers were almost laughable. When I was 17 or 18, I was training six hours a week. I don’t think we’ve had the same trajectory,” she explained.