Emma Raducanu might be a Grand Slam champion but she still finds herself entering relatively unknown territory from time to time.<\/p>\n
The challenge she faced with her Australian Open first-round match against Thailand’s Mananchaya Sawangkaew was a rare late start.<\/p>\n
But it ended up being a relatively early finish – at least by Melbourne Park standards – as the British number one grew in confidence to wrap up a 6-4 6-1 victory before 11pm local time.<\/p>\n
Raducanu had only previously played one other night match at a major. That was the 2021 US Open semi-final, on her way to the title which she will forever be remembered for.<\/p>\n
So the 23-year-old had to think carefully about how to tailor her routine and started her day with a “potter around” Melbourne’s bustling riverside area.<\/p>\n
“I had a very chill breakfast, walked around for 45 minutes, walked back, had treatment, a chat with the team, then took a nap and came in,” she explained.<\/p>\n
“I came in [to Melbourne Park] at 5:30pm, started with my routines and practised at 6pm.<\/p>\n
“I’m a night owl, but not to play.”<\/p>\n
Raducanu arrived on court shortly after 9pm, growing in confidence after a sluggish start where errors flew off her racquet.<\/p>\n
Waiting around all day is not unusual for most players.<\/p>\n
Raducanu’s compatriot Cameron Norrie described having a “very tricky day” himself, arriving on site at 10am thinking he would play about 2:30pm.<\/p>\n
The two matches before Norrie’s first-round match ended up going long, meaning he did not start until almost 6:30pm and eventually came through a five-set battle with France’s Benjamin Bonzi shortly before Raducanu won.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been trying to train myself to be better in the night,” said Raducanu.<\/p>\n
“That’s half the battle for me, to be honest – how to arrange the day, when to switch on and when to switch off.<\/p>\n
“I’ve gone through a few trials of what works and what doesn’t work.<\/p>\n
“I actually felt really good before the match. It helped that the match before didn’t take very long so I wasn’t on too late.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emma Raducanu might be a Grand Slam champion but she still finds herself entering relatively unknown territory from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-416455","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416455","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=416455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}