The world of the little yellow ball has just experienced a feat and no one saw it coming. Emma Raducanu became the first player from qualifying to win a Grand Slam title on Saturday in New York. The 18-year-old Briton won the US Open, beating 19-year-old Canadian Leylah Fernandez 6-4, 6-3.
She is also the youngest player to win a Grand Slam since the Russian Maria Sharapova who won Wimbledon at the age of 17 in 2004. Her feat is all the more impressive as Raducanu, 150th in the world, won everything in her path, not leaving no crumbs to her opponents: she won her ten games, qualifying included, by 20 sets to 0. The last to have achieved such a “perfect” at the US Open was Serena Williams in 2014.
The Fernandez sensation
In front of her was Fernandez (73rd), the other sensation of the fortnight, who managed to reverse very compromised situations, at the expense of seasoned opponents. She had thus blocked the road of three of the five best players in the world: the Japanese Naomi Osaka (3rd), the Ukrainian Elina Svitolina (5th) then the Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka (2nd).
But this time, Fernandez couldn’t do anything against Raducanu, whom she found for the first time in the pros, three years after her loss to the Briton in the second round of the Wimbledon junior tournament. The context was obviously quite different, in the heart of the cauldron of the short Arthur Ashe and its 23,000 electric fans.
A bad first serve
Raducanu was the most aggressive in this final, like this successful entry break, taking advantage of the feverishness in the service of his opponent. Fernandez succeeded in breaking down because she knew how to compete in the exchange, showing that, failing to be so powerful, she was very good at counterattacking and imposing rallies. But after 58 hotly contested minutes, it was the Briton who again made the difference on opposing service, with a superb uncrossed forehand.
The Canadian, weighed down by a first ball barely exceeding 50% success, again gave up her engagement twice in the second round which she had started well by breaking the first. After saving two match points at 5-2 on her serve, she fought to delay the deadline, finally releasing her shots. On one of them offering him a bullet debreak, Raducanu grated his left knee on a slip, a tear of blood running down his leg. After a medical time out, slightly contested by Fernandez aware that her momentum could be broken, the Briton, after a difficult smash past ric-rac, offered her third match point. The maid.
Raducanu collapsed with joy under the cheers. A star was born in Flushing Meadows. If at Wimbledon, she had given up in the round of 16, stifled by the stake, victim of respiratory problems, this time it was she who took the breath of her opponents and the public.