Britain’s Emma Raducanu fell agonisingly short of beating world number one Aryna Sabalenka and earning a statement win at the Cincinnati Open.<\/p>\n
Raducanu, 22, lost 7-6 (7-3) 4-6 7-6 (7-5) as defending champion Sabalenka edged a battle lasting more than three hours to reach the fourth round.<\/p>\n
Having also pushed Sabalenka at Wimbledon, Raducanu’s performance was further evidence she can severely test the world’s best as her revival continues.<\/p>\n
This season, with the British number one’s fitness issues largely behind her and the development of greater resilience, she has climbed back into the top 40.<\/p>\n
“As I said at Wimbledon I am really happy to see her healthy – mentally and physically,” said Sabalenka.<\/p>\n
“Every time she is improving and I can see she is getting back to her best.<\/p>\n
“I’m enjoying fighting against her – she is such an incredible player.”<\/p>\n
Raducanu could be seeded among the leading 32 players at the upcoming US Open, providing a more favourable draw – in theory at least – at the hard-court Grand Slam which she won as a teenage qualifier in 2021.<\/p>\n
On the basis of this display against Sabalenka, there are plenty of positives for Raducanu to take into the final major of the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain’s Emma Raducanu fell agonisingly short of beating world number one Aryna Sabalenka and earning a statement win…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-61064","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\/61064","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=61064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}