Emma Raducanu explains how she won US Open as qualifier
Rising British star Emma Raducanu missed tennis during the pandemic and that made her hungry. Raducanu, 18, claimed her maiden Grand Slam title as a qualifier at this past US Open. Raducanu, who was ranked at No. 150 in the world and missed out on the US Open main draw cut, won three qualifying matches to earn a main draw place.
Raducanu then won seven main draw matches to became the first qualifier ever to win a Grand Slam. Raducanu was absolutely impressive for three weeks at the US Open, winning all 10 matches in straight sets. "Having 18 months away from the sport, coming out you play every match like you don't know when your last match will be.
That was how I was approaching the whole summer. I was so grateful to be back on the match court competing again and the joy and satisfaction that I was getting from the improvements I was seeing with every match was spurring me on, building every time, every match.
And then I played some of the best tennis of my life at the end of the seven weeks," Raducanu told the WTA website.
Raducanu was always focused on her next opponent
Raducanu tried to stay in the present and don't think too much ahead.
"But the biggest thing is that I never once got ahead of myself. For three weeks I just played the opponent in front of me. I took care of what I wanted to try and achieve on that day against that opponent and just repeated it for three weeks.
I played some really great tennis against some extremely tough opponents and faced a lot of adversity despite the fact that I didn't drop a set. Those sets could have gone either way, a lot of them, because they were very tight games and the margins are so small," Raducanu added.