Raducanu made encouraging progress last year, climbing back into the world’s top 30 and playing more matches than in any previous season.<\/p>\n
This defeat means she has still only gone past the third round of a Grand Slam once since her stunning US Open triumph as a teenage qualifier in 2021.<\/p>\n
However, the off-season technical work she planned to put in with coach Francisco Roig – who helped Rafael Nadal win 16 of his 22 major titles – was compromised by a foot injury.<\/p>\n
When Raducanu returned in 2026, a tweak to her forehand – a higher and longer takeback, designed to add more spin – was clear.<\/p>\n
But she seemed to lack trust in the shot against Potapova, landing 70% of her forehand returns in – compared to 96% from her opponent – and making 19 unforced errors off that wing.<\/p>\n
“I want to be playing a different way. The misalignment with how I’m playing right now and how I want to be playing is something I want to work on,” said Raducanu.<\/p>\n
Mistakes came from all aspects of Raducanu’s game against Potapova, with the Briton saying afterwards she did not feel “very well” from the start.<\/p>\n
It showed in a subdued performance. As well as seeming to lack trust in her shots, her mood was flat and rarely interacted with her support box or the crowd.<\/p>\n
It is the first time since the 2022 US Open, when she was still 11th in the world, that Raducanu has been beaten by a lower-ranked player at a major.<\/p>\n
“I just want to hit the ball to the corners and hard. I feel like I’m doing all this variety, and it’s not doing what I want it to do,” she added.<\/p>\n
“I need to just work on playing in a way more similar to how I was playing when I was younger.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Raducanu made encouraging progress last year, climbing back into the world’s top 30 and playing more matches than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-427788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}