This year, Raducanu returned to New York – the scene of her 2021 title success as a teenage qualifier – riding a wave of optimism.<\/p>\n
Looking more carefree and content, she has played some of her best tennis since that extraordinary triumph and is close to climbing back into the world’s top 30.<\/p>\n
But this defeat provided another reality check.<\/p>\n
Leading into the match, Raducanu warned of 2022 Wimbledon champion Rybakina’s ability to take the racquet of an opponent’s hand with her enormous serve and penetrating returns.<\/p>\n
That is exactly what happened in a one-sided first set lasting only 27 minutes.<\/p>\n
Rybakina’s groundstrokes were clean and crisp off both wings, with a stream of winners painting the baseline and leaving Raducanu looking rather helpless.<\/p>\n
A total of 23 winners from 26-year-old Rybakina underlined her dominance from the back of the court.<\/p>\n
Raducanu’s serve had been the bedrock of her game in two clinical opening wins against lowly ranked qualifiers Japan’s Ena Shibahara and Indonesia’s Janice Tjen.<\/p>\n
But she did not land anywhere near as many first serves on Rybakina, which instantly put her under pressure against an opponent who represented a huge step up in class.<\/p>\n
Kazakhstan’s Rybakina, whose power from the baseline is among the very best when she finds her groove, continued to redline in the second set.<\/p>\n
It was felt Raducanu stood a chance if she managed to get Rybakina moving around the court, but the pace of her opponent’s ball meant she was not given the time to do so.<\/p>\n
Despite winning numerous WTA titles on hard courts, Rybakina had never gone past the third round at Flushing Meadows before.<\/p>\n
Next she will face Italian seventh seed Jasmine Paolini or 2023 Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova for a place in the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This year, Raducanu returned to New York – the scene of her 2021 title success as a teenage…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-101257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}