Emma Raducanu had to win two matches on the same day to book a place in her first WTA 500 final at the HSBC Championships.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Raducanu, who is unseeded at the Queen\u2019s Club, produced an impressive 6-2, 6-2 win over world No.19 Iva Jovic in the semi-finals. The Brit started off guns blazing, using her powerful ball-striking to dictate points. She eased her way through the opener in exactly 40 minutes before facing a sterner test in the second set.<\/p>\n
In the second frame, Raducanu was broken for the first time and then had to fend off break points during two other service games. One of which the Brit came back from a 0-40 deficit. Raducanu\u2019s fighting spirit paid off as she broke her American rival twice before battling to victory.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means everything to be doing it here at Queen\u2019s in front of everyone,\u201d Raducanu said of reaching her first grass-court final on the WTA Tour.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe support today was electric,\u201d\u00a0she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Due to adverse weather on Friday, the 23-year-old also played her quarter-final match earlier in the day. Taking on Uzbekistan\u2019s Kamilla Rakhimova, she sealed a 6-3, 7-5 victory. She has yet to drop a set in the tournament, with her other wins being over Anna Blinkova in the first round and seventh seed Sorana Cirstea in the second round.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this week has been incredible. \u00a0I\u2019ve really enjoyed playing here and I think that really shows in my tennis and how I\u2019ve been able to compete, stick out some really tough moments,\u201d \u00a0said Raducanu.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means everything, making it to (the final on) Sunday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Queen\u2019s is the most prestigious tournament Raducanu has reached the final at since the 2021 US Open, which she won as a qualifier. She was also runner-up at another event earlier this year, which was a WTA 250 in Romania.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The run comes after what has been a difficult past few weeks for Raducanu, who was on a three-match losing streak coming into Queen\u2019s and had failed to score back-to-back wins at her five previous tournaments. In the final, she will play former Wimbledon semi-finalist Donna Vekic, who beat Katie Boulter 6-1, 6-3.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMe and my team have really stuck through some really tough moments in the last few months where the results haven\u2019t been going our way, but we\u2019ve been putting in work day in, day out,\u201d\u00a0Raducanu reflected.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to take this opportunity to also thank them for getting me to this situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Raducanu is the first British woman to contest a final at Queen\u2019s since Winnie Shaw in 1970. The tournament didn\u2019t hold any women\u2019s events between 1974 and 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emma Raducanu had to win two matches on the same day to book a place in her first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-265721","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\/265721","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=265721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}