By Martyn Herman<\/p>\n
LONDON, June 13 (Reuters) \u2013 Once labelled the new golden girl of tennis after winning the 2021 U.S. Open as a teenaged qualifier, Emma Raducanu\u2019s career has been a tale of injury layoffs, hiring and firing coaches and a struggle to live with the weight \u200bof expectation.<\/p>\n
On Saturday against new American teenage sensation Iva Jovic, she offered renewed hope of a \u200cresurgence ahead of Wimbledon with a clinical 6-2 6-2 victory to reach the Queen\u2019s Club final.<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old arrived at the London grasscourt event without a Tour-level win since March.<\/p>\n
Now she has reeled off four in a row without dropping a set and will take that momentum into Sunday\u2019s final against Croatia\u2019s vastly-experienced Donna Vekic seeking a first title since her fairytale run in \u200cNew York.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt \u200bmeans everything to be doing it here at Queen\u2019s, the support \u2060was electric, Raducanu said on court.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been \u2060able to stick out some tough moments in the last few months. Any Brit would love to lift the title here.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 29-year-old Vekic will present a formidable barrier after showing her class in a 6-1 6-3 demolition of Britain\u2019s Katie Boulter in the day\u2019s first semi-final.<\/p>\n
Vekic dropped only six points \u200bon serve to silence a partisan crowd on Andy Murray Arena as wildcard Boulter could not reproduce the level she reached to stun world number two Elena Rybakina late on Friday evening.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have been improving \u2060with each match and that\u2019s usually how it goes on grass, \u2060the more time you spend on it the better you get,\u201d Vekic, who \u200blost to Jasmine Paolini in Wimbledon\u2019s longest-ever women\u2019s singles semi-final in 2024, said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love this surface, I love this \u200bcity. I\u2019m really happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
British fans enjoying the sunshine and Queen\u2019s Club\u2019s hospitality were treated to \u200ca double helping of Raducanu as she was first up for her delayed quarter-final against Uzbekistan\u2019s lucky loser from qualifying Kamilla Rakhimova.<\/p>\n
She battled to a 6-3 7-5 win despite a second-set injury scare when she needed attention to her left thigh.<\/p>\n
After Boulter\u2019s defeat she then returned to court to face 18-year-old sixth seed Jovic \u2014 the \u2060youngster who has taken the Tour by storm this year, rising to 19th in the rankings.<\/p>\n
Jovic had the advantage of a longer rest, having beaten second seed Amanda Anisimova the previous day.<\/p>\n
With Andrew Richardson, the coach she split \u2060with almost straight after winning the \u200cU.S. Open, once again guiding her, Raducanu imposed her game on the teenager \u2060from the start.<\/p>\n
Raducanu produced a level of aggression from the baseline that \u200bJovic could \u200cnot handle.<\/p>\n
After jumping into a 4-1 lead she never took her foot off \u200bthe gas and \u2060wrapped up the victory in a hurry to reach only her third career final and first on grass.<\/p>\n
Vekic, who actually lost in qualifying but got a lucky loser spot into the draw, has reached her first final since the Paris Olympics in 2024 when she took the silver medal.<\/p>\n
She will be seeking a third win this week against a British player after also taking out teenager Mika Stojsavljevic.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Martyn Herman, editing by Louise Heavens, \u200bClare Fallon and Pritha Sarkar)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Martyn Herman LONDON, June 13 (Reuters) \u2013 Once labelled the new golden girl of tennis after winning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-266156","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\/266156","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=266156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}