Despite appearing in a great hurry to finish off Sloane Stephens, Emma Raducanu afterwards signed the camera: ‘My own pace.’
The 21-year-old won the last nine games of the match against fellow US Open champion Stephens to reach the second round in Eastbourne, before elaborating on that cryptic message.
‘I would say it’s just: I’m going to do things on my own time, at my own pace, and I’m in no rush to do anything,’ she said. ‘Everything I’m doing and playing for now is for myself.
‘Whether that’s tournament scheduling, whether that’s how much time I take off to train compared to compete, I’m way more focused on my own lane and less susceptible to outside opinions.
‘I’m enjoying it, doing everything for myself and being independent out here.’
Every action of Raducanu’s has been under microscopic examination since her US Open title in 2021 and recently her decision to take almost two months off after the Madrid Open in April, including skipping French Open qualifying, came in for criticism.
But her sunny demeanour here by the seaside after a semi-final run in Nottingham – she then skipped Birmingham, taking a week off – has gone a fair way towards justifying her scheduling.
Asked if she felt she had been too influenced by what others thought after her Grand Slam win, she replied: ‘I would say it’s pretty natural, after becoming a different person overnight almost. At such a young age, it’s easy to get caught up in it.
‘At one point I was chasing, playing too many tournaments when I wasn’t ready, and just picking up niggle after niggle in every tournament, because I never really gave myself any time to do the training and the work. I think that’s something I did a lot better this year.
‘Even though I might get challenged or questioned for not playing certain tournaments like the French Open or the Olympics, that is just part of doing things at my own speed and doing things how I want to rather than how everyone else thinks is best for me.
‘Ultimately me and the close few people around me know what is best for me and my game.’
Raducanu’s scheduling is certainly unorthodox but perhaps we cannot apply traditional logic to a young woman who sat her A Levels and three months later won a Grand Slam.
In many ways – and Raducanu herself has made this analogy – her career is happening back to front: the Grand Slam first, and then the years of building her game.
‘The most important thing for me is playing when I’m ready,’ she added. ‘When I’m fresh and when I want to, because there have been certain tournaments where I didn’t necessarily want to play and it’s showed in my game.’
Raducanu was positively glowing here on Monday as she described how she had ‘rekindled a fire inside of me’.
‘Good things are 100 per cent going to happen,’ she said, and that big talk was backed up by a big performance yesterday. Raducanu hit 13 winners and one unforced error in the second set as she dispatched an increasingly uninterested Stephens.
She will face another American, Jessica Pegula, in today’s second round, and with the No2 seed fresh off the first grass court title of her career in Berlin, that will be a serious test.
Between Raducanu’s finish and Katie Boulter’s start, Great Britain won 14 games in a row on Devonshire Park’s centre court.
The British No 1 took the first five games off Croatia’s Petra Martic, eventually winning 6-1, 7-6.
It has been quite the grass court season for these two so far. Aside from Boulter’s illness-induced withdrawal from Birmingham, the only match either she or Raducanu have lost was when they faced each other in the Nottingham semi-finals.
Boulter won that match – and the Nottingham title – and squeaked through here against Martic after saving three second-set points.
Next up for the 27-year-old is 2021 champion Jelena Ostapenko. British No2 Harriet Dart plays 2020 Australian Open winner Sofia Kenin, making it a trio of enticing second-round matches today for the home contingent in Eastbourne.
