Remember when Raducanu caused a seismic shock by winning the 2021 US Open as a teenage qualifier who had barely played a professional tournament?<\/p>\n
She managed to achieve the unthinkable by playing with a freedom which she has not been able to replicate consistently since.<\/p>\n
Almost five years later and having reached the last 16 of a Grand Slam tournament only once since, Raducanu is determined to get back to basics.<\/p>\n
That means rediscovering her natural instincts to be an aggressive baseliner. Her early success was built around not being afraid to take returns early in a bid to hustle opponents.<\/p>\n
First serves were put back deep in the court to instantly put her rivals on the back foot and second serves were swatted away with impunity.<\/p>\n
Raducanu’s power off both wings was impressive, although it was clear her forehand needed more work than her solid and stylish backhand.<\/p>\n
Over the next year or so, the forehand deteriorated to a place where it lacked any punch and, following the wrist surgery which ruled her almost completely of the 2023 season, is what Roig tried to remodel.<\/p>\n
The lack of trust in what Raducanu was being asked to do, though, was clear at the Australian Open.<\/p>\n
In a demoralising second-round exit, she made 19 unforced errors off that wing and spoke afterwards about returning to a simple philosophy – “hitting the ball to the corners and hard”.<\/p>\n
There is another aspect to Raducanu’s ambitions of returning to the top 10 and challenging the very best players – her body and mind.<\/p>\n
She must continue to build fitness and durability, and have the heart for a scrap in tough moments, to implement the style she wants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Remember when Raducanu caused a seismic shock by winning the 2021 US Open as a teenage qualifier who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-516068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}