The Francisco Roig era of Emma Raducanu\u2019s career began with a positive performance as the 30th seed defeated Olga Danilovic of Serbia 6-3, 6-2 on a sweltering day in the second round at the Cincinnati Open.<\/p>\n
Raducanu\u2019s recent progress has been driven by her reliability against inferior opponents and she is now 19-4 against lower-ranked players over the past year. Having spent much of the past four years struggling to string together wins, she is now as match tough as she has ever been.<\/p>\n
A far greater test awaits Raducanu, who had received a first-round bye owing to her status as a seeded player, in round three. A Wimbledon rematch is guaranteed as she will either face the world No 1 Aryna Sabalenka, her conqueror in the third round, or the 2023 Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova, who Raducanu defeated in round two<\/a> this summer.<\/p>\n During her one previous appearance in Cincinnati two years ago, where she dismantled Serena Williams in the final month of her career and Victoria Azarenka in consecutive matches, Raducanu showed that the faster courts here suit her well. This time, however, she had the oppressive heat to deal with. The temperature on Champions Court rose to 30C (85F) with considerable humidity.<\/p>\n Raducanu opened the match poorly with three loose unforced errors and a double fault to drop her opening service game to love. An ultra-offensive lefty with a big serve and forehand but poor movement, Danilovic\u2019s constant aggression allowed the Serb to dictate the majority of the early exchanges. In the opening games, Raducanu was forced to scrap behind the baseline, chasing down balls while trying to elicit unforced errors from her opponent for much of the opening set.<\/p>\n Francisco Roig has been brought in as Emma Raducanu\u2019s new coach. Photograph: Frey\/TPN\/Getty Images<\/p>\n However, Raducanu\u2019s depth of service return was brilliant from the beginning, consistently refusing Danilovic the short balls she was looking for behind her first serve. Raducanu also defended well, maintaining her depth and patiently looking for opportunities to take the ball early and attack. In the face of this intensity, Danilovic\u2019s error count rose throughout.<\/p>\n After struggling on serve early on, Raducanu gradually grew in confidence. From her uncertain position behind the baseline, she ended a composed, efficient performance striking the ball early and putting Danilovic\u2019s laboured movement under constant pressure as she eased into the third round.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend\u2019s action<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n One year after missing most of the North American swing, including the Cincinnati Open, before her first round loss at Flushing Meadows, Raducanu is in quite a different position. Her run on the hard courts began with two positive showings, reaching the semi-finals of the WTA 500 event in Washington before winning two matches last week in Montreal. Now she will have another opportunity to test her level against one of the world\u2019s best.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Francisco Roig era of Emma Raducanu\u2019s career began with a positive performance as the 30th seed defeated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-70973","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\/70973","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=70973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}