Emma Raducanu
Emma Raducanu (; born 13 November 2002) is a British professional tennis player. She reached a career-high ranking of No. 11 by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) on 25 April 2022, and is the current British No. 1. Raducanu is the reigning US Open champion and the first British woman to win a Grand Slam singles title since Virginia Wade in the 1977 Wimbledon Championships. Raducanu was born in Toronto and raised in London. She made her WTA Tour debut in June 2021. With a wildcard entry at Wimbledon, ranked outside the top 300, she reached the  fourth round in her first major tournament. At the US Open two months later, Raducanu became the first singles qualifier in the Open Era to win a Grand Slam title, beating Leylah Fernandez in the final without dropping a set in the tournament. It was the second Grand Slam tournament of her career; she holds the Open Era record for the fewest majors played before winning a title. Personal life and education. Emma Raducanu was born on 13 November 2002 in Toronto, Canada, and was raised in Bromley, England. Her father Ion Răducanu () is from Bucharest, Romania, and her mother  Renee Zhai (Dongmei) is from Shenyang, China. She has said that her parents "both came from very academic families... [in] communist countries so education was kind of their only option". Both of her parents work in the finance sector. Her family moved to England when she was two years old, and she holds both British and Canadian citizenship. She is fluent in English and Mandarin and almost fluent in Romanian; her grandmothers live in Bucharest and Northeast China. Raducanu started playing tennis at the age of five, though participated in various other sports and activities as a child, including basketball ; golf; karting; motocross; skiing; horse riding; and ballet. She is also a fan of Formula One and the football club Tottenham Hotspur. She attended Bickley Primary School followed by Newstead Wood School, a selective grammar school in Orpington, where she obtained an A* in mathematics and an A in economics in her A-Levels. Raducanu has attributed her mentality and ethics to her professional role models, Simona Halep and Li Na. According to Simona Halep Romania is "proud" of Emma Raducanu's historic US Open win and have adopted her as one of their own. On 28 January 2022, a  man was found guilty of stalking Raducanu at her home; Raducanu said that the incidents made her feel unsafe in her house and concerned to go out alone. On 23 February 2022, the man was handed a five-year restraining order. Junior career. Raducanu made her International Tennis Federation (ITF) debut in Liverpool at the Nike Junior International (Grade-5 event) after having entered on her 13th birthday, the earliest allowed age of entry. She subsequently won the tournament eight days later and became the youngest ever winner of an ITF Under-18 tournament. Her ITF junior success continued in 2017 with  two titles in February at the Yonex ITF Hamburg and ITF Oslo Open Grade-4 events. Raducanu won the ITF Chandigarh Lawn Tennis girls' tournament in January 2018. In 2018, she won ITF Grade-3 at Chandigarh and Grade-2 junior tournaments at New Delhi both in India. Raducanu defeated Diana Khodan of Ukraine in the final at Chandigarh, held at the Lawn Tennis Association Stadium, where she won in straight sets. She won two additional titles the following month, four in total for 2018 and seven over the course of her junior career, with wins at the Biotehnos Cup and Siauliai Open  Grade-2 events. Later that year, she reached the girls' singles quarterfinals at both the Wimbledon Championships and the US Open. At Wimbledon, Raducanu defeated Leylah Fernandez in the second round, a victory she would repeat in the (senior) US Open final three years later. Raducanu turned professional in 2018. She alternated between junior and professional tournaments during 2018 and 2019. Professional career. 2018–2020: ITF Circuit and LTA British Tour Masters. Raducanu made her debut on the ITF Women's circuit in 2018 and secured her first title of the year in May at the $15,000 ITF Tiberias. She finished  the season with a second $15,000 title in October at the ITF Antalya. In 2019, Raducanu competed in Maharashtra, India. She retired in the second round of the $25K Solapur Open. She won a $25K event in Pune, India, in December; in the final at Deccan Gymkhana Ground, she won against Naiktha Bains in three sets. Her semifinal and quarterfinal victories came in three sets. In the Fed Cup (Billie Jean King Cup) in 2019, she was a hitting partner for the British team. She was then selected to play for the team in 2020  Qualifying after Johanna Konta withdrew to focus on the Olympics. At the time, Raducanu was described as "the British player with the most potential of her generation". She would have partnered Bains in the doubles qualifiers against Slovakia, but the match was not played. Asked about being called up to the British team as a teenager, Raducanu said "Being a bit of the underdog is great because you can go out there with no fear." In 2020, many tennis events were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Raducanu participated in exhibition matches and small tournaments in the United Kingdom. She  won the Lawn Tennis Association LTA British Tour Masters title in December 2020. She also devoted time to her academic studies, preparing for her A-Levels (which she took in 2021). 2021: WTA Tour, top 20, and Grand Slam debuts. Tour debut and Wimbledon. Raducanu began training with coach Nigel Sears, father-in-law of former men's singles world No. 1 Andy Murray, after Sears was replaced as Anett Kontaveit's coach at the end of April 2021. Raducanu was not selected for the Billie Jean King Cup team for the 2020 Play-offs, the end of the postponed  2020–21 competition, in April 2021. At the beginning of June, she made her WTA Tour main-draw debut at the 2021 Nottingham Open as a wildcard entry. She lost in the first round to fellow Briton Harriet Dart. In late June, Raducanu made her Grand Slam main-draw debut on a wildcard to the Wimbledon Championships. She advanced to the third round with initial victories over Vitalia Diatchenko and Markéta Vondroušová. She was the youngest British woman to reach the Wimbledon third round since Elena Baltacha in 2002. She then defeated Sorana Cîrstea to reach the fourth round, becoming, at  18 years and 239 days old, the youngest British woman to reach the last 16 in the Open Era, and guaranteeing her entry to the world's top 200, having been ranked world No. 338 at the start of Wimbledon. On 5 July 2021, Raducanu retired in the second set of her fourth round match against Ajla Tomljanović, after experiencing breathing difficulties and sickness. US Open title. In July 2021, Raducanu changed her coach from Sears to Andrew Richardson, one of her youth coaches. Richardson was chosen to coach Raducanu through the US Open Series as he was already familiar  with her game and would be "more likely than anyone to make her feel comfortable" taking on matches in the United States with her newly-elevated status. Raducanu then played at the Silicon Valley Classic, the first women's tournament in the annual US Open Series, in August after again receiving a wildcard to enter the tournament; she lost in the first round to Zhang Shuai. She reached the final of the WTA 125 event in Chicago, where she lost to Clara Tauson. The WTA ranking points she gained brought her to a new career-high ranking of world No . 150. At the US Open, Raducanu entered as a qualifier. She beat Bibiane Schoofs, Mariam Bolkvadze, and Mayar Sherif in straight sets in qualifying rounds to enter the main draw. There, she played two top-40 ranked players, and, in order, beat Stefanie Vögele, Zhang Shuai, Sara Sorribes Tormo, Shelby Rogers, Belinda Bencic, and Maria Sakkari to reach the final, also without dropping a set. In progressing to the final of the US Open, she gained more than 100 ranking places in the one competition, entering the top 25 and displacing Konta to become British No. 1. She became the only  singles qualifier to reach the semifinal and final of the US Open in the Open Era, and the youngest player to reach the final since Maria Sharapova in 2006. She was also the fifth player in the Open Era to make the semifinal on her US Open debut. Following her win over Sakkari in the semifinals, Raducanu became the second player born in 2002 (the first being her opponent) to reach the final of the US Open, and the first British woman to reach the US Open final since Virginia Wade in 1968. Wade attended several of Raducanu's matches , including the final. The US Open was broadcast on Amazon Prime Video, a subscription streaming service; British network Channel 4 arranged to purchase the rights to simultaneously air the final less than 24 hours before it was played. Though it was overnight in the UK, 9.2million people in the nation watched the final live on Channel 4; in the United States, more people watched the women's singles final than the men's. Raducanu defeated Leylah Fernandez in two sets, winning with a 109-mph ace, in what was the first all-teenage women's singles final since the 1999  US Open between Serena Williams and Martina Hingis. She won the title without dropping a set, the first woman to do so at the US Open since Williams in 2014. Raducanu was the first qualifier (male or female) to win a Grand Slam tournament in the Open Era, and the first woman in the Open Era to win the second major tournament she had entered. It also meant that she became just the second US Open debutante, after Bianca Andreescu, to win the tournament. Raducanu's record-breaking run and victory at the tournament was nicknamed "The Fairytale of New  York". As a result of her US Open victory, Raducanu rose to No. 23 in the rankings, a jump of 332 places from the start of the year. She was the first British woman to win a Grand Slam singles title since Wade at Wimbledon in 1977, and the first British Grand Slam singles champion since Andy Murray at the 2016 Wimbledon Championships. Top 20 and permanent coach. Less than two weeks after her victory at the US Open, Raducanu chose not to extend her coaching arrangement with Richardson. In the following months, she held coaching trials in Bromley, at  Bromley Tennis Centre. She said that she would not rush making a permanent coaching appointment, and felt it was important for her game to become more independent, but intended to have a coach before the 2022 Tour began. Raducanu played in the Indian Wells Open in October 2021, accepting a wildcard place in the main draw. Although she was without a coach, former British No. 1 Jeremy Bates aided her at the event; he had worked with her at the LTA prior to Indian Wells. Her hitting partner during the tournament was Raymond Sarmiento. Raducanu lost in straight sets in  her first match against Aliaksandra Sasnovich. After her loss in Indian Wells, Raducanu withdrew from the Kremlin Cup citing schedule changes. During this time, Raducanu continued her search for a permanent coach in time for the 2022 Australian Open and spent a week training with Konta's former coach Esteban Carril prior to her next tournament. She then played WTA tournaments as a favourite. She entered the Transylvania Open, in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, as the third seed. There, she earned her first WTA Tour victory by defeating Polona Hercog. She advanced to the quarterfinals by defeating Ana Bogdan, before losing  to Marta Kostyuk in straight sets. Her last WTA Tour event of 2021 was the Linz Open, which she entered as the top seed for the first time. She lost in her round of 16 match against Wang Xinyu, in three sets. Shortly after the tournament, she announced she had hired a permanent coach, naming Torben Beltz to the position a few days after he dissolved his longstanding on-off partnership with Angelique Kerber. Raducanu had wanted to find a coach with tour experience after the US Open; former world No. 1 Mats Wilander opined that an elite coach like  Beltz could not help an eighteen-year-old (as Raducanu was) who is already elite and instead discovering their own game. After finishing 2021 WTA Tour at a career high of world No. 19, Raducanu participated in an exhibition match against Elena-Gabriela Ruse at the Champions Tennis event in the Royal Albert Hall on 28 November 2021 and won in two sets. She was scheduled to play Bencic in another exhibition at the Mubadala Championship, before withdrawing after testing positive for COVID-19. 2022: Australian Open debut. Raducanu was set to start the season at the Melbourne Summer Set, but  withdrew, citing her recent bout of COVID-19. She began the season at the Sydney International and lost to Elena Rybakina 6-0,6-1 in the first round. She reached her career-high singles ranking of No. 18 on 10 January 2022 and made her Australian Open debut as the 17th seed, where she defeated 2017 US Open champion and former world No. 3 Sloane Stephens in the first round. She was defeated by Danka Kovinić in the second round, putting the loss down to a blister on her racquet hand. On 14 February 2022, she climbed to a new career -high singles ranking of 12. At the Abierto Zapopan she retired in her first-round match against Daria Saville in the third set, due to an injury acquired during the over three-and-a-half-hour match, the longest of the WTA season, after having served for the match a set earlier. She subsequently withdrew from the Monterrey Open due to the reported "small left leg injury". This season marked her first appearance in the "Sunshine Double" (Miami and Indian Wells Opens), after having only played at Indian Wells before. She entered the Indian Wells Open as the 11th seed  and, with a bye in the first round, defeated former world No. 4 Caroline Garcia in the second round for her first win at the event. She was defeated in the third round by Petra Martić in three sets. She then entered the Miami Open, also as the 11th seed and with a first round bye. She lost to Kateřina Siniaková in three sets in the second round. In March she was announced on the British team for the Billie Jean King Cup qualifiers alongside Harriet Dart, Katie Swan, and Sonay Kartal; the matches marked her first time actually playing  in the competition, as well as her first match of the season on clay. She debuted as Great Britain's top seed, after having played her last event as the fifth seed, in a tie against the Czech Republic. She secured her first professional victory on clay in her first match of the tournament against Tereza Martincová in straight sets. She was defeated by Markéta Vondroušová in her second match of the qualifying tournament. Following this, her season continued with a WTA clay season debut at the Stuttgart Open in April, where she secured her first WTA tour victory on  clay against Storm Sanders in the first round. After defeating Tamara Korpatsch in the second round, she advanced to her first quarterfinals in a WTA 500 level event and was defeated by world No. 1 Iga Świątek. This was her first match against a No. 1 ranked player. After only five months of working together, Raducanu announced a split from her coach Torben Beltz to use a new training model with the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) supporting in the interim. This change included the addition of LTA coach Louis Cayer as a consultant on her technique, particularly serves, having worked  together since early April. She made her debut at the Madrid Open as the ninth seed and is being aided by Iain Bates of the LTA in place of a coach. After defeating Tereza Martincová in the first round, she is scheduled to play Marta Kostyuk. Playing style. Raducanu is primarily a baseline player, with an aggressive style of play. She hits the ball early, and is adept at redirecting power down the line. Her best groundstroke is her two-handed backhand, which was described as "world-class" by former British No. 1 Anne Keothavong. Raducanu can hit her backhand  one-handed with slice, to break up the pace of rallies and disrupt her opponent's rhythm, but she does not use this shot often. Raducanu has a strong forehand, although it is more volatile than her backhand. Her serve is strong, peaking at 110 mph (177 km/h), and she has a consistent ball toss, and accurate serve positioning. Raducanu's most effective serve is a wide, sliced serve, which she used during the 2021 US Open. Raducanu's second serve is typically delivered at a higher speed than the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) average, at 93 mph  (150 km/h), allowing her to play offensively even after missing a first serve. She is known for her return of serve. She keeps opponents deep in the court by taking the ball early, and hitting hard down the line, whilst attacking short second serves by going for return winners. Her movement, court coverage, footwork, speed, and anticipation allow her to rally and defend effectively against opponents. She blends good point construction with tactical flexibility, making it difficult for opponents to read her game. Despite typically playing from the baseline, Raducanu is a capable net player, and she possesses an  effective drop shot. Raducanu is comfortable on all surfaces, although she has stated that she prefers hard courts, where she won her maiden Grand Slam title. Endorsements. Raducanu is sponsored by Nike for clothing and shoes, and by Wilson for racquets, currently endorsing the Wilson Blade range of racquets; despite this, she uses the Wilson Steam 100 on court, painted as a Wilson Blade. Raducanu's popularity and marketability increased considerably after her US Open victory, with sports analysts noting her potential to appeal to multiple markets. Raducanu became a brand ambassador for luxury retail and fashion brands Tiffany & Co.  and Dior, as well as French water brand Evian, British Airways, and British telecommunications company Vodafone. She also starred alongside other British sportspeople and celebrities in a Christmas advertisement for sporting goods retailer Sports Direct in November 2021. In March 2022, Raducanu became a brand ambassador for German automobile manufacturer Porsche. Awards and honours. In November 2021, Raducanu was named Sportswoman of the Year by the "Sunday Times". "The Guardian" ranked the 2021 US Open final number 47 on their 50 best TV shows of 2021 list. Raducanu won Sportswoman of the Year and the Peter Wilson Trophy for international  newcomer in December 2021, awarded by the Sports Journalists' Association. She was voted the 2021 WTA Newcomer of the Year by the WTA. On 19 December 2021, Raducanu was named the BBC Sports Personality of the Year, becoming the first female tennis player to win the accolade since Virginia Wade won in 1977. She was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to tennis. In March 2022, Raducanu was named Sports Star of the Year at the Stylist’s Remarkable Women Awards 2022. In April 2022, Raducanu won the  Laureus World Sports Award for Breakthrough of the Year award. Singles performance timeline. "Only main-draw results in WTA Tour, Grand Slam tournaments, Billie Jean King Cup and Olympic Games are included in win–loss records." "Current through the 2022 Porsche Tennis Grand Prix." Record against top 10 players. "Raducanu's record against players who have been ranked in the top 10." "Active players are in boldface." Record against No. 11–20 players. Raducanu's record against players who have been ranked world No. 11–20. Active players are in boldface: WTA Tour career earnings. "Current through 25 April 2022" Emma Raducanu