Emma Raducanu will have to wait for her first WTA title \u2013 as opposed to the grand slam she won in 2021 \u2013 after coming up short in a thrilling tussle with Croatia\u2019s Donna Vekic.<\/p>\n
Although Vekic gave her an absolute schooling in a first-set \u201cbagel\u201d, Raducanu found her form in the second set, which turned into an 80-minute barnstormer.<\/p>\n
She had chances to force a decider, notably when she held set point at 5-4, and found herself at the net after driving a short ball towards the Vekic backhand.<\/p>\n
But Vekic, who started and finished this match in magnificent form, conjured up a perfectly judged backhand lob which curled tantalisingly over Raducanu\u2019s extended racket and dropped a foot inside the baseline.<\/p>\n
There was plenty more excitement to come as Raducanu fought off four match points before going down 8-6 in the second-set tie-break. It was an agonisingly close finale but she should still be encouraged by what she has done over the past week.<\/p>\n
The result leaves Raducanu with a difficult choice to make about her schedule, however. She now stands in 31st position on the WTA live rankings, one place ahead of Vekic, which \u2013 if it can be maintained \u2013 would give her a seeding at Wimbledon.<\/p>\n
But to be certain of earning that seeding, she might perhaps need to pick up some more points on the remaining grass-court events in Nottingham and Eastbourne. After the heavy workload of the last week, which included two matches on Saturday and the need some strapping on her left thigh after a fall during the quarter-final, she has a ticklish decision in front of her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emma Raducanu will have to wait for her first WTA title \u2013 as opposed to the grand slam…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":638391,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[160074,6962,59,160075,217,101,118,56,54,55,157732,17087,6546],"class_list":["post-638390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-apple-news-free","tag-emma-raducanu","tag-gb","tag-live-priority","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-us-content","tag-womens-football","tag-wta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638390","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=638390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/638391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}