Englishwoman Emma Raducanu came through a testing second set to beat Uzbek qualifier Kamilla Rakhimova 6-3, 7-5 on Saturday and reach the semi-finals of The HSBC Championships, recovering from a mid-match scare to keep her run on the Queen\u2019s Club grass alive.<\/p>\n
Raducanu, ranked No 42, had looked in command early. After a slow start in which neither player settled, the British No 1 found her rhythm following a brief pause for a flypast over the Andy Murray Arena, reeling off a series of comfortable holds \u2013 two of them to love \u2013 to close out the opening set. Her serve was the foundation, as it has been all week: she won 85 percent of points behind her first delivery in the first set.<\/p>\n
A slip, a medical timeout and a fight to the finish<\/p>\n
The aggression on return that has defined Raducanu\u2019s week carried into the second set, where she broke immediately with a backhand return winner. The match turned awkward when she slipped while leading 3-1 and took a medical timeout at 3-2, returning with heavy strapping on her left thigh. Rakhimova pounced, breaking from 0-40 down had been clawed back to deuce to level at 3-3.<\/p>\n
From there the set became a series of exchanged blows. Raducanu broke for 5-4 and served for the match, only for the resilient Rakhimova, vocal and combative throughout, to break straight back. Raducanu broke again with another biting return, served for it a second time and, after a couple of missed attempts, finally closed it out at the net.<\/p>\n
Raducanu reached the last eight by beating Romanian seventh seed Sorana Cirstea (6-4, 6-2) and Russian Anna Blinkova (6-0, 6-3), while Rakhimova had edged compatriot, Englishwoman Harriet Dart (5-7, 6-1, 7-5) in the previous round. She next meets American sixth seed Iva Jovic, the 18-year-old who upset second seed Amanda Anisimova to reach her own first semi-final here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Englishwoman Emma Raducanu came through a testing second set to beat Uzbek qualifier Kamilla Rakhimova 6-3, 7-5 on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-265511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}