The 18-year-old is ‘super-appreciative’ as she prepares to face Belinda Bencic in the US Open quarter-finals
One of the greatest cramming sessions of the year continues. Emma Raducanu began her full-time senior career before Wimbledon with no experience at the very top level of professional tennis, but with every match she plays across this delirious summer, she is learning new information and improving each time. Now 26 matches later, she is a US Open quarter-finalist. She has already grown as much in 10 weeks as some players do in years, and she only wants more.
The breakout performances from other teens in New York offer a helpful reference point for Raducanu’s inexperience and why the most remarkable part of her story is not that she is just 18 and recently received her A-levels. Leylah Fernandez, who turned 19 on Monday, is only two months older than Raducanu, and reached the semi-finals on Tuesday, made her tour-level debut in 2018 and her steady growth has been easy to follow across the 34 tour-level tournaments she has played since. Raducanu has played four: Nottingham, Wimbledon, San Diego and the US Open.
