A series of injuries over the past four years, combined with the mental load of such frenzied attention, means Raducanu is only now seeing the US Open as her “happy place”.<\/p>\n
Since arriving in New York last weekend, Raducanu has cut a jovial figure – particularly during her outing alongside Carlos Alcaraz in the revamped mixed doubles event.<\/p>\n
Feeling more relaxed and carefree off court is how she feels she can best fulfil her potential on it.<\/p>\n
That was evident in the straightforward victory over 130th-ranked Shibahara, where she settled quickly as gusty winds whipped around Louis Armstrong Stadium.<\/p>\n
Opening the match with a fizzing serve out wide was a strong statement of intent from Raducanu and it laid the platform for a dominant opening set which she wrapped up in 26 minutes.<\/p>\n
While Raducanu was moving well and hitting minimal unforced errors, she was helped by a lack of quality from her opponent.<\/p>\n
Shibahara, playing in only her second Grand Slam main draw, lost four of the seven break points she faced and hit 36 unforced errors as her baseline game broke down.<\/p>\n
In contrast, Raducanu was barely troubled on her increasingly threatening serve and played cleanly from the back of the court.<\/p>\n
Raducanu will face either Indonesian qualifier Janie Tjen or Russian 24th seed Veronika Kudermetova in the second round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A series of injuries over the past four years, combined with the mental load of such frenzied attention,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89929,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-89928","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\/89928","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=89928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}