Raducanu, Emma (2002- )

The most improbable women’s Grand Slam final in history features the unseeded teenagers Leylah Fernandez and Emma Raducanu.The U.S. Open women’s final is perhaps the most surprising Grand Slam final in tennis history, featuring two unseeded teenagers, including the first qualifier to play in a final in the Open era.Leylah Fernandez will face Emma Raducanu, and the teenagers — Fernandez turned 19 this week, and Raducanu is 18 — have been the sensations of a U.S. Open that began without many of the most significant stars in tennis. Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Serena and Venus Williams were forced to skip the tournament with injuries. Fernandez, of Canada, and Raducanu, of Britain, have more than filled the void. Their tennis and infectious personalities have been nothing short of show stopping.How to watchSaturday, Sept. 11. 4 p.m. Eastern time. On ESPN and streaming on the ESPN app. In Canada on TSN and streaming on the TSN app.Raducanu took the long way, quickly.Ranked 150th, Raducanu had to play in the qualifying rounds of the U.S. Open a week before the main-draw tournament began, in order to secure her spot. Raducanu won three matches to reach the main draw, and then six more matches to reach the final, becoming the first player in history to reach a major final as a qualifier.While many players would look haggard after nine matches in one tournament, Raducanu looks hale and happy, helped by her incredible efficiency on court. Raducanu has won all nine of her matches in straight sets, never needing so much as a tiebreaker in any of the 18 sets. In only one set, in the second round of qualifying against Mariam Bolkvadze, did her opponent reach five games. Bolkvadze led with Raducanu serving at 4-5, 0-30, two points from taking the second set, only for Raducanu to reel off 12 straight points to end the match.Remarkably, despite playing three more matches, Raducanu has spent less time on court than Fernandez at this U.S. Open, totaling 11 hours and 34 minutes in nine matches, compared with Fernandez’s 12 hours and 45 minutes in six matches.Fernandez is a giant killer.Leylah Fernandez after winning her semifinal match against Aryna Sabalenka.Ben Solomon for The New York TimesWhile Raducanu has rolled, Fernandez has fought, beating some of the game’s toughest players in three-set battles. After winning her first two matches against the past quarterfinalists Ana Konjuh and Kaia Kanepi, Fernandez knocked out the defending champion, Naomi Osaka, in three sets in the third round. The third-seeded Osaka served for the match at 6-5 in the second set, but Fernandez broke and ran away with the second-set tiebreaker as Osaka unraveled.In the fourth round, Fernandez beat Angelique Kerber, the 2016 U.S. Open champion, in three sets. In the quarterfinals, Fernandez beat the fifth-seeded Elina Svitolina in a third-set tiebreaker. In the semifinals, Fernandez beat the second-seeded Aryna Sabalenka in three sets.“It has helped me open my eyes that I have no limit to my potential,” Fernandez said of her run. “I can go three sets against these players, I can play against these top players, and I can win against these top players.”Though Fernandez has paid a higher physical toll to reach the final, she will enter it far more battle tested. She has proved what she can do deep into a third set of an important match, while Raducanu’s response in those situations remains largely unknown. More

The teenagers, who meet in Saturday’s final, have illuminated this U.S. Open and transformed it into perhaps the most surprising women’s Grand Slam tournament of the Open era.It was no mean feat to come up with a tennis story that could compete with the first serious bid for a men’s singles Grand Slam in 52 years.But the women have somehow managed it in this mad and marvelous edition of the U.S. Open, or to be more precise, the teenagers have managed it.After knocking off their elders one by one by one, Emma Raducanu, 18, of Britain and Leylah Fernandez, 19, of Canada will now play in Saturday’s singles final.“I find it fascinating that literally the only way for the women’s draw to capture some focus away from Novak Djokovic chasing the most historic feat in tennis, the calendar-year Grand Slam, was to come up with something like a fairy tale,” said Pam Shriver, once a surprise U.S. Open finalist herself at age 16. “With all due respect, it couldn’t have been the No. 2 player and No. 10 player facing off, but this story is almost like the perfect complement to Djokovic going for history.”This will be the first all-teenage Grand Slam final since Serena Williams defeated Martina Hingis in 1999 at Flushing Meadows to win the first of her 23 major singles titles.It seems fitting, with Williams missing this tournament with a leg injury and soon to turn 40, that two young players have come along to generate a similar buzz of discovery.But this is not quite the same teenage scene. Williams and Hingis were already stars in 1999. Hingis was ranked No. 1 and seeded No. 1. Williams was seeded No. 7 and had been making headlines and waves with her older sister Venus for years.Fernandez and Raducanu were familiar only to tennis cognoscenti before arriving in New York. Fernandez is unseeded and ranked 73rd. Raducanu is ranked 150th, which meant that she had to make it through qualifying just to reach the main draw. Though she turned heads, particularly in Britain, by reaching the fourth round at Wimbledon in her Grand Slam singles debut this year, she seemed overwhelmed by the moment and the physical challenge and was unable to finish that fourth-round match against Ajla Tomljanovic because she had trouble breathing. But instead of that frightening experience holding her back, she has rebounded beautifully and has yet to drop a set in New York: not in three qualifying matches or her six main-draw matches against vastly more experienced players, including the new Olympic champion Belinda Bencic.Raducanu is now the first qualifier to reach a Grand Slam singles final, going one round further than the likes of John McEnroe.Before Wimbledon, Raducanu was only the 10th ranked player in her own country, but she will be British No. 1 on Monday and potentially the first British woman to win a major singles title since Virginia Wade won Wimbledon in 1977.Wade was watching inside Arthur Ashe Stadium late Thursday night as Raducanu fought off seven break points in her opening two service games and then stepped on the accelerator to defeat the No. 17 seed, Maria Sakkari, 6-1, 6-4.When Raducanu finished off her latest upset with an expertly timed forehand swing volley, she dropped her racket and put both hands on top of her head, a faraway look in her eyes.She was asked later how she would describe what she had accomplished so far.“A surprise,” she said. “Yeah, honestly I just can’t believe it. A shock. Crazy. All of the above. But it means a lot to be here in this situation. I wanted obviously to, like, be playing Grand Slams, but I didn’t know how soon that would be. To be in a Grand Slam final at this stage of my career, I have no words.”Not long before, Fernandez was asked to describe what she had accomplished so far after her much more suspenseful semifinal victory over the No. 2 seed, Aryna Sabalenka.“I’m just having fun,” she said. “I’m trying to produce something for the crowd to enjoy. I’m glad that whatever I’m doing on court, the fans are loving it, and I’m loving it too. We’ll say it’s magical.”The word applies to both players’ runs to the final, but their paths to this rarefied moment have been both remarkably similar and remarkably different. Both were born in Canada, but though Raducanu still holds a Canadian passport, she left with her parents to live in London when she was 2. Both also grew up in multicultural households. Raducanu’s father is Romanian; her mother is Chinese. Fernandez’s father, Jorge, also her coach, was born in Ecuador before immigrating to Canada at age 4 with his parents, and Fernandez’s mother was born in Canada to parents who immigrated from the Philippines.But Fernandez’s family has had significant financial challenges and hardships, with her mother leaving Canada to work in California for several years during Fernandez’s youth to better support the family.“Those few years have been definitely hard for me, because I needed a mom,” Fernandez said. “I needed someone to be there for me through the age of 10 to 13. I’ve barely seen her at that time. Every time I saw her, it was like seeing a stranger but at the same time someone so familiar.”Though Tennis Canada has provided some support for Fernandez’s tennis, money has often been tight, her father said.Fernandez said she also had faced many doubts in her early career about her potential. She remembered a teacher in Canada telling her to stop playing tennis and just focus on her studies because she would “never make it.”“Now I’m laughing,” she said. “I’m just glad that she told me that because every day I have that phrase in my head saying that I’m going to keep going. I’m going to push through, and I’m going to prove to her everything that I’ve dreamed of, I’m going to achieve.”She is off to a fine start in New York after a summer of underwhelming results and after never advancing past the third round in her first six Grand Slam tournaments.Raducanu, whose parents work in finance, does not appear to be fueled by a desire to quiet the skeptics and, unlike Fernandez, she was not firmly set on being a professional tennis player until recently.“Maybe two years ago,” she said. “I always had my education as a backup. I was doing it alongside my tennis. I had options. I still do, but obviously I’m a hundred percent in my tennis now.”Raducanu and Fernandez met as juniors, and Raducanu said they connected over their Canadian roots. But until now their most significant previous match was in the second round of the Wimbledon junior tournament in 2018.They will meet again on Saturday with rather more at stake in the first U.S. Open women’s final between unseeded players.Picking a winner looks like a fool’s errand in light of both players’ inexperience at this level. Raducanu has been the more dominant force, dispatching opponents with powerful precision, and is tied for second in the tournament in the percentage of return games won and percentage of service games won. Fernandez has had to scrap, hustle and believe through four straight three setters. But Fernandez also has had a tougher draw: defeating two former No. 1 players in Naomi Osaka and Angelique Kerber, the former WTA Finals champ Elina Svitolina and the imposing Sabalenka.Fernandez’s ability to beat that many quality players in taut, tight matches is a tribute to her resolve, adaptability and talent. She is a left-hander, and her serve, particularly her first serve, has been very effective. She has been selectively and effectively bold, hitting more return winners (22) than any player in this Open. Sabalenka overwhelmed her early on Thursday but Fernandez then adjusted to the pace and reeled her in, exchanging low baseline bolts at times and abruptly changing pace with drop shots at others.As tempting as it is to consider this the arrival of two new top-tier players, the recent history of women’s tennis argues for more restraint. The game has been producing new contenders at a rapid clip. Since the start of 2015, there will have been 13 first-time Grand Slam singles champions, with Raducanu or Fernandez set to be the 14th. Some of those champions have established themselves as No. 1 players, like Osaka and Ashleigh Barty. But others have fallen back like Sloane Stephens and Jelena Ostapenko.“On the women’s side in recent times we just don’t know what will happen after they have this success,” Shriver said. “For this particular tournament, it’s incredible, but for it to pay dividends in the long run, we need to see them in the quarters, semis and finals. It would be great, but we have got to be patient because of the way things could be derailed for one or both after this because of the way it changes a teenager’s life. I certainly understand that, but for now, let’s just enjoy it.”That sounds like the right approach. The teenagers’ joy has been a delight to behold as they have taken turns illuminating this U.S. Open and transforming it into perhaps the most surprising women’s Grand Slam tournament of the Open era.Riding back from Queens to Manhattan well after midnight on Friday, the bus passed by a huge U.S. Open billboard of Serena Williams featuring the words “The Return of Amazing.”Even without Williams at Flushing Meadows this year, the words have still rung true. More

The teenagers from Britain and Canada have advanced to the semifinals at the U.S. Open. (The run certainly surprised Emma Raducanu, who had a flight home booked after the qualifying tournament.)There they go again.For the second consecutive day at the U.S. Open — or maybe it was the fifth, or the 10th, depending on when the counting started — a teenage woman did the thing she was not supposed to do.Just as Leylah Fernandez of Canada did on Tuesday, Emma Raducanu of Britain bulldozed her way through a player who had every right to believe the day would belong to her, disposing of 11th-seeded Belinda Bencic of Switzerland, 6-3, 6-4, in 82 minutes, and giving the U.S. Open two semifinalists who are unable to celebrate their success legally with an alcoholic beverage.How absurd is all of this? Consider that Raducanu is ranked 150th in the world and played three qualifying matches just to secure a spot in the main draw. She clearly did not expect to make it: She had booked a flight home for immediately after the qualifying tournament.She continues to be as shocked by her success as anyone.“I didn’t expect to be here at all,” Raducanu said after she became the first qualifier to make it to the U.S. Open semifinals in the Open era. “Out there on the court today, I was saying to myself, ‘This could be the last time you play on Ashe, so might as well just go for it and enjoy everything.’”As impressive and surprising as Raducanu has been in her first U.S. Open, until Wednesday she had yet to beat a seeded player. Fernandez had. She entered her quarterfinal on Tuesday after beating the defending women’s champion, Naomi Osaka, and the German veteran Angelique Kerber, a former world No. 1 and three-time Grand Slam tournament champion. Fernandez, ranked 73rd, backed up those wins with a stirring three-set upset of fifth-seeded Elina Svitolina of Ukraine.Across the net from Raducanu on Wednesday stood Bencic, the recently crowned Olympic gold medalist, a smooth and powerful 24-year-old from Switzerland who has been a mainstay of the top 20 the past three years, rising as high as fourth in the world rankings in February 2020.Not a problem. Just as she did in her fourth-round match, Raducanu started with a minor hiccup, losing the first game she served and going down, 0-2, in the first set. But she had her way with Bencic from there. By the end of the sixth game she was even. By the end of the ninth, she had won the first set.She broke Bencic in the fifth game of the second set and largely cruised from there, making a game that she has had little experience with at the top level of the sport look easy. Belinda Bencic returned a shot against Raducanu during their match.Elsa/Getty ImagesUnlike Fernandez, who has specialized in a form of tennis that resembles opera — long afternoons and evenings filled with wild swings and rousing moments of drama — Raducanu’s New York experience has been a series of routine days at the office, of making players with far more experience than she has look bad at tennis.“I just wish I could have made it a little bit harder and played better or played more my game,” a disappointed Bencic said after the match.Raducanu does not do tennis attrition. She plays as though she knows the hours after her matches will be filled with signing autographs, taking selfies with a legion of fans and charming an unrelenting beast known as the British sports media. She finishes matters on the court quickly.Including the qualifying tournament, she has played eight matches on this trip to New York and has yet to drop a set. It is a bizarrely charmed run. On match point against Bencic, she smacked a one shot off the rim of her racket, then watched it loop into the back corner of the court.“She’s problem solving, adjusting her game, playing on her terms, and she has a big enough game to just beat people,” Tim Henman, the former British star who does tennis commentary for Amazon Video, said of Raducanu.On the surface, Fernandez and Raducanu might appear similar. Teenage women — they were both 18 until Fernandez turned 19 on Monday — they have spent the past 10 days capturing the hearts and imaginations of New York’s boisterous and emotional crowds with an ease that Novak Djokovic can only dream of. They have been competing in the same junior level tournaments for years.Also, both are the product of mixed-race parents — Raducanu’s father is Romanian and her mother is Chinese, while Fernandez’s father is from Ecuador and her mother is Filipino. Their families have since moved from the countries where their prodigies were born. Raducanu was born in Canada but lives in England. Fernandez spent much of her childhood in Montreal but lives and trains in Florida.The similarities largely end there.Raducanu is listed at 5 feet 7 inches, but presents as far more imposing than that. She is long and lean and glides across the court, staying low to the ground, sometimes scraping her knees on the court as she squats to rescue a backhand in the flashy style of the retired Polish player Agnieszka Radwanska.She often rifles the ball within inches of the net to near the baseline on the other side, then pushes forward, hunting for the first chance to end the point as quickly as she can. She does not hit four shots to set up the winner on the fifth one. If there is a hint of an opening she grabs it, winding up and using the fluid leverage of those long limbs to whip a shot at the corner of the court.Fernandez is listed at 5-6, but the power she generates seems like a mystery of tennis physics. She can crank her serve into triple digits, and taking her spot on the baseline, which she rarely abandons, she can fire lasers, especially off her forehand, even though she barely takes a backswing.Raducanu cannot stop saying how shocked she is by her success. Fernandez said she expected to beat Osaka as soon as she walked onto the court. After her win over Kerber she said she had long been confident that her game would bring her to this level.Raducanu serving during her quarterfinal win.Justin Lane/EPA, via ShutterstockRaducanu has spent the past years balancing school and tennis, attending the Newstead Wood School in London, and took her university admission exams earlier this year, around the same time she was making her debut in top-level tournaments on the women’s tour. She got into Wimbledon on a wild card that she earned with a couple of wins at a lower-tier tournament in Nottingham in June.Fernandez has been all about tennis for years. This is her seventh Grand Slam tournament.Raducanu’s parents work in finance. They are taking in her success from home in England, unable to travel to the United States without a special exemption that takes several weeks to process and did not seem as if it would have been worthwhile. She said she had spoken to them only sparingly lately. Raducanu joked that they “ghosted” her when she was trying to text them after her match on Monday.During the last two years she has worked with a series of coaches in the British tennis aristocracy, including Nigel Sears, the father-in-law of Andy Murray.Fernandez’s mother has been courtside at all her matches. Her father, Jorge, is also her coach, and he speaks with her every day, sending her game plans for her next match. She has developed largely without the involvement of Canada’s national tennis program.Now, it’s on to the rarefied ground of the semifinals of a Grand Slam. Fernandez will face Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus, the No. 2 seed. Raducanu will face the winner of Wednesday night’s match between Maria Sakkari of Greece and Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic.After that, win or lose, the klieg lights that always follow the kind of breakout performances Raducanu and Fernandez have achieved will undoubtedly arrive, an experience that has swallowed plenty of teen phenoms whole as their lives begin to fill with obligations to sponsors and to live up to the expectations that their stirring performances have wrought.“I just really hope that everyone will protect them,” Bencic said of Fernandez and Raducanu, noting how good for tennis their success could be. “Not try to kind of, not destroy but, put so much pressure and so much hype around them so it just gets too much.”That is not how it usually goes, but for now, it’s nice to think it might. More