LONDON: Emma Raducanu played some of her most clinical tennis since her U.S. Open title run to sweep aside 2023 Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova 6-3, 6-3 on Wednesday and reach the third round.
In front of a raucous Centre Court crowd, Raducanu surprised even herself sometimes in outdueling the Czech player in a match between Grand Slam winners who were both unseeded.
“That was one of the best matches I’ve played in a long time,” said Raducanu, the 2021 champion at Flushing Meadows. “I turned one point around that I think is probably the best point I’ve ever played, so that was pretty crazy. I think the crowd were loving it.”
She may have to up her level even further in the next match, though. In a tournament where four of the five top women’s seeds have already been eliminated, the British home favorite will be up against the only one remaining — No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka.
“Yeah, I guess there’s no pressure at all on me the next round,” Raducanu said in an on-court interview, laughing.
There’s always pressure on Raducanu playing at Wimbledon, especially after she became the first British woman since 1977 to capture a Grand Slam title when she won the U.S. Open as a qualifier.
She struggled with injuries and form after that, and her fourth-round showing at Wimbledon last year is her best result in a major since.
But her win against Vondrousova, who in 2019 was the French Open runner-up, showed Raducanu might be back to her best.
“She was playing amazing tennis,” Vondrousova said. “She was crushing me in the rallies, so there wasn’t much I could do.”
Raducanu seemed pretty impressed with her own performance as well.
“I think today I played really, really well,” she said. “I knew today I had to be aggressive because Marketa would beat me if I was going to push the ball around.”