Osaka, 28, is a four-time Slam winner, while Raducanu, who recently turned 23, stunned the sporting world in 2021 when she triumphed at the US Open as a qualifier.<\/p>\n
It was long past high time for a meeting of the pair when they finally went head to head at the Washington Open in July.<\/p>\n
Raducanu was dominant that day against the former world number one, winning 6-4 6-2 for one of her best results of the year.<\/p>\n
Before that match, Osaka said of Raducanu: “For me, she’s, like, the queen, like there’s a royal air around her.<\/p>\n
“I feel like whenever I see her or Serena, the kid in me comes out, because they were my favourite players to watch.”<\/p>\n
It emerged in that week that the pair were effectively strangers to each other on a personal level, having never had a conversation.<\/p>\n
On the court, Raducanu’s game was doing plenty of talking.<\/p>\n
“I watched her in Wimbledon, but I think it is different playing someone in real life than playing them or seeing them on TV,” Osaka said after her defeat.<\/p>\n
“It was really good to get the experience, to feel how her ball is. Hopefully I can play her again one day.”<\/p>\n
Raducanu’s verdict was one of great satisfaction, as she said: “I quite like these kind of match-ups where you’re playing a great opponent, a lot of people have eyes on the match, they’re into it. I’m pleased with how I was able to navigate playing a four-time Slam champ.”<\/p>\n
Tennis has made both players wealthy and famous, but they have – perhaps more than most in the sport – suffered away from the court.<\/p>\n
Both have experienced a downside to their status, with Raducanu having been followed by a stalker,<\/a> while Osaka has struggled at times with her mental health and took a break from the sport<\/a> after losing early at the 2021 US Open, the event where Raducanu’s momentous breakthrough arrived.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Osaka, 28, is a four-time Slam winner, while Raducanu, who recently turned 23, stunned the sporting world in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-299441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}