Emma Raducanu entered 2022 under significant doubt after a Covid-19 disrupted off-season and a 6-0, 6-1 loss to Elena Rybakina in Sydney. Subsequent years brought pressure from sudden success, an underpowered game against elite opponents, and recurring physical problems. Recent months have seen tangible progress: convincing wins, confident serving, early ball-taking and aggressive baseline positioning, though those wins came against lower-ranked qualifiers. Rybakina remains a substantial step up, leading the tour in serving metrics and producing powerful, clean groundstrokes. Raducanu hired Francisco Roig to improve her game and will use upcoming matches to measure that development.
At the start of a new season in January 2022, Emma Raducanu's first 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.
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.
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