{"id":456414,"date":"2026-02-08T13:18:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T13:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/456414\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T13:18:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T13:18:16","slug":"emma-raducanu-loses-first-final-since-u-s-open-2021-to-sorana-cirstea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/456414\/","title":{"rendered":"Emma Raducanu loses first final since U.S. Open 2021 to Sorana C\u00eerstea"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emma Raducanu<\/a> fell to a 6-0, 6-2 defeat Saturday afternoon in her first final since she won the 2021 U.S. Open<\/a> as a qualifier.<\/p>\n

A relentless Sorana C\u00eerstea<\/a>, playing in front of her home fans at the Transylvania Open in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, took full advantage of a flat performance from the Briton, who received a blood-pressure check during the second set and looked physically out-of-sorts from late in the first set.<\/p>\n

C\u00eerstea, 35, who is also playing her final season on tour, looked to attack Raducanu as early as possible on both serve and return, becoming even more intense as Raducanu began to fade physically towards the end of the opening set. She double-faulted on game point several times across the match, including on the final point and made numerous errors on her first shot after her serve, unable to use promising positions to win quick points.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to thank the public. You really made me feel at home this week. Sorry today I couldn\u2019t bring my best,\u201d Raducanu, whose father is Romanian, said during her on-court interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly it\u2019s been a while since I\u2019ve given one of these speeches. I want to thank Alexis and the people back home who\u2019ve supported me throughout the last few years. It\u2019s been like 4 or 5 years since my last final. It means a lot. I\u2019m really happy it\u2019s here in Cluj,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Raducanu had shown admirable resilience throughout the tournament, coming back from 0-5 down to beat Kaja Juvan in the round of 16 and toughing out a three-set win against Oleksandra Oliynykova\u2019s array of moonballing, sudden changes of pace and sharp angles. But C\u00eerstea was a match too far, for her tennis and for her physical condition. The final never became a contest, even when Raducanu was able to produce a break of serve from almost nowhere early in the second set.<\/p>\n

The event was also Raducanu\u2019s first since splitting with Francis Roig, her coach of a little over six months. British hitting partner Alexis Canter traveled with Raducanu to Romania.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the day, Czech qualifier Sara Bejlek stunned world No. 11 Ekaterina Alexandrova 7-6(5), 6-1 to win the Abu Dhabi Open. Bejlek, 20, who started the tournament as world No. 101, will rise to No. 38 when the rankings update on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emma Raducanu fell to a 6-0, 6-2 defeat Saturday afternoon in her first final since she won the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456415,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-456414","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\/456414","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=456414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}