Emma Raducanu trounced the former US Open champion Sloane Stephens with a devastating performance at Eastbourne. Afterwards, she rated her 6-4, 6-0 victory as her best effort on grass since she first burst into the national consciousness by reaching the fourth round of Wimbledon in 2021. “I think my best performance on this surface was probably when I played the third round at Wimbledon [beating Sorana Cirstea that first summer],” said Raducanu, with admirable precision.
“And then probably the second round at Wimbledon [where she beat last year’s champion Marketa Vondrousova]. This was probably, like, third maybe.” Admittedly, Stephens did rather give up the chase, dropping her intensity noticeably after going down a break in the second set. But Raducanu had been forced to earn her advantage after a tight and nervy first half-hour.
Once she had claimed the opening set, however, she was untouchable as she romped to victory in just 76 minutes. Her second-set performance delivered 13 clean winners to place against just one unforced error, leaving a demoralized Stephens counting down the seconds until she could finally sneak off the court. The key game came at 4-4 in the first set, as Raducanu served and went 15-40 down. She saved the two break points brilliantly, first stranding Stephens with a perfectly judged drop shot – the only time she used this ploy in the match – and then banging down an ace.
After an extended to-and-fro, Raducanu held for 5-4 and then reeled off another seven games to march into the second round in fine fettle.
Completing a #RothesayInternational debut win in style @emmaraducanu pic.twitter.com/JPTNM8GFZm
— LTA (@the_LTA) June 25, 2024
After concluding the win, which should carry her back into the world’s top 150 even if she does not win another match in Eastbourne, Raducanu performed an on-court interview in which she said “For me it was a case of adapting to the court, I have never played out on this Centre Court before and every grass court plays very differently.
“I think it was a very close first set and I was down all the way through in the first set but I managed to break. It was difficult as Sloane is super-athletic and in the first set especially she was making a lot of balls and counter-punching really well. So it took a lot to try and hit through her but I managed to figure it out in the second set.”
That tight game at 4-4 felt like it was the moment at which Raducanu found her form. She had been wayward early on, with her first-serve percentage hovering only just above 50 and her forehand looking decidedly shaky.
But after several conversations with her coach Nick Cavaday at courtside, Raducanu began to time the ball better. It looked like Cavaday was encouraging her to play with more shape, and by the end she was stroking the ball around with confidence and fluency.
Her returns were particularly devastating, ruthlessly dissecting Stephens’s underpowered serve. It was a backhand return winner, hit up the line, which completed the rout.
Asked how much input Cavaday had supplied, Raducanu declined to offer a clear answer, but did explain that the heaviness of this year’s Slazenger balls had necessitated a change of tactics after that tricky first half-hour. Striking through the court had proved ineffective, so she switched to exploiting the angles more cannily.
“I think it was more just, like, ‘Okay, I need to figure out how to hit through these conditions,’” Raducanu said. “In the first set, she had so much time on the ball. I was just getting outplayed a little bit because my ball speed was probably too low.”
Asked whether the weight of balls could create any physical problems, given that she underwent double-wrist surgery last year, Raducanu said “It is something that I just need to take care of and make sure I’m doing all my rehab. It’s not just me on the grass. A lot of the players pick up wrist, elbow, shoulder injuries or niggles, because it’s just slower and slower [so that] the viewers watch longer points.”
Raducanu’s win earns her a crack at Jessica Pegula, the world No5, who won last week’s WTA event in Berlin. Despite being the daughter of Terry Pegula, the billionaire Buffalo Bills owner, Pegula keeps such a low profile that she was able to catch the train down to Eastbourne ahead of this tournament.
On the court, she is a tough competitor who defeated Raducanu in their one previous meeting at Cincinnati in 2022.
