The Francisco Roig era of Emma Raducanu\u2019s career began with a positive performance as the 30th seed defeated Olga Danilovic of Serbia 6-3, 6-2 on a sweltering day in the second round at the Cincinnati Open.<\/p>\n
Raducanu\u2019s recent progress has been driven by her reliability against inferior opponents and she is now 19-4 against lower-ranked players over the past year. Having spent much of the past four years struggling to string together wins, she is now as match-tough as she has ever been.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cYou always feel a little bit of nerves before the first round, but I think that overall, I\u2019m approaching everything in a lot more calm way, mature, and I think I\u2019m trusting a lot more the work I\u2019m doing behind the scenes. I know I\u2019m putting a lot of hours in, and it takes some of the pressure off of the results.\u201d<\/p>\n
A far greater test awaits Raducanu, who had received a first-round bye owing to her status as a seeded player, in round three. A Wimbledon rematch is guaranteed as she will either face the world No 1, Aryna Sabalenka, her conqueror in the third round, or the 2023 Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova, who Raducanu defeated in round two<\/a> this summer.<\/p>\n Raducanu was supported from the crowd by Roig, who consistently offered tactical advice from his position next to the baseline. Although their partnership is still less than a week old, she believes Roig has already made a positive difference to her game. \u201cI think the way I\u2019m playing, the movements of my shot, improving the quality of my shot,\u201d she said. \u201cThere were four or five points where I did something that we were working on, and it\u2019s always really satisfying and rewarding when you hit a shot and you\u2019ve worked on it in practice. So I think I\u2019m going to improve a lot, hopefully doing the work day in, day out.\u201d<\/p>\n After their first conversations about her game, Raducanu and Roig quickly agreed that the main focus of their work is improving her overall level. \u201cIt\u2019s just, like, the level needs to be better. In a good way, not in a negative way. It\u2019s just calling it how it is,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I\u2019m very like that. I\u2019m very kind of factual and I don\u2019t necessarily like fluffing something up. I think that\u2019s where we get on really well and we understand each other. Just in general, everything is like: \u2018We need to improve. We need to get every shot better.\u2019 And that\u2019s exciting, because I feel like there\u2019s a lot of potential to go and I don\u2019t think I\u2019m near it.\u201d<\/p>\n During her one previous appearance in Cincinnati two years ago, where she dismantled Serena Williams in the final month of her career and Victoria Azarenka in consecutive matches, Raducanu showed that the faster courts here suit her well. This time, however, she had the oppressive heat to deal with. The temperature on Champions Court rose to 30C (85F) with considerable humidity.<\/p>\n Raducanu opened the match poorly with three loose unforced errors and a double fault to drop her opening service game to love. Constant aggression from Danilovic, an ultra-offensive lefty with a big serve and forehand but poor movement, allowed the Serb to dictate the majority of the early exchanges. In the opening games, Raducanu was forced to scrap behind the baseline, chasing down balls while trying to elicit unforced errors from her opponent for much of the first set.<\/p>\n Francisco Roig has been brought in as Emma Raducanu\u2019s new coach. Photograph: Frey\/TPN\/Getty Images<\/p>\n However, Raducanu\u2019s depth of service return was brilliant from the beginning, consistently refusing Danilovic the short balls she was looking for behind her first serve. Raducanu also defended well, maintaining her depth and patiently looking for opportunities to take the ball early and attack. In the face of this intensity, Danilovic\u2019s error count rose throughout.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend\u2019s action<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n After struggling on serve early on, Raducanu gradually grew in confidence. From her uncertain position behind the baseline, she ended a composed, efficient performance striking the ball early and putting Danilovic\u2019s laboured movement under constant pressure as she eased into the third round.<\/p>\n One year after missing most of the North American swing, including the Cincinnati Open, before her first round loss at Flushing Meadows, Raducanu is in quite a different position. Her run on the hard courts began with two positive showings, reaching the semi-finals of the WTA 500 event in Washington before winning two matches last week in Montreal. Now she will have another opportunity to test her level against one of the world\u2019s best.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, Iga Swiatek, the Wimbledon champion, continued her excellent form by easing into the third round with a composed 6-1, 6-4 win over Anastasia Potapova. Jannik Sinner, the men\u2019s No 1, returned to competition for the first time since his Wimbledon triumph with an easy 6-1, 6-1 win over Daniel Elahi Gal\u00e1n.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Francisco Roig era of Emma Raducanu\u2019s career began with a positive performance as the 30th seed defeated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-56635","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56635","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=56635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}