In her two matches following illness, Raducanu appeared to be lacking in both energy and confidence as she showed little emotion on court.<\/p>\n
But, 16 days after her first-round exit at Roland Garros, the Briton looked much more relaxed on Andy Murray Arena.<\/p>\n
She smiled at the crowd during her warm-up, while there was a celebratory roar or fist pump after every point she won.<\/p>\n
“The way I was feeling on the court, the way I was moving, the way I was expressing myself, just the whole package – not necessarily the tennis – just how I kind of was acting on the court, I really enjoyed it,” Raducanu said.<\/p>\n
“I was just feeding off the atmosphere, and it felt free, it felt clear, and a lot of clarity. Not necessarily thinking too much, not trying to do too much. It felt very natural.”<\/p>\n
The 2021 US Open champion held a commanding 3-0 lead before rain halted play – but that would not disrupt her rhythm.<\/p>\n
She captured the first set without reply after just 20 minutes on court, winning 25 of the 31 points played – hitting 11 winners and just two unforced errors.<\/p>\n
Raducanu maintained that excellent level to begin the second set with a break of serve – although she would not have it entirely her own way.<\/p>\n
A Queen’s quarter-finalist last year, Raducanu was hampered by double-faults as she allowed Blinkova back in – with four successive breaks of serve tying the set at three games apiece.<\/p>\n
However, Raducanu broke again, courtesy of a fortuitous net cord, to set up the chance to serve out the match, and she wore a beaming smile in the sunshine as a closing backhand winner down the line on her second match point was met by huge cheers.<\/p>\n
Writing ‘back home’ with a heart on a TV camera lens before exiting the court, Raducanu will return to face Romanian seventh seed Sorana Cirstea in the second round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In her two matches following illness, Raducanu appeared to be lacking in both energy and confidence as she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-630706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630706","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=630706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}