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‘Unbelievable ball-striking’ in Emma Raducanu’s defeat to Coco Gauff
The Telegraph – Emma Raducanu’s Australian Open campaign has come to an end, but not before a match which had the former Wimbledon champion Boris Becker saluting “the future of women’s tennis”.
This first meeting between 20-year-old Emma Raducanu and 18-year-old Coco Gauff on Rod Laver Arena was the sort of captivating occasion that could boost the WTA Tour out of its current slump. Another leading commentator, Channel Nine’s Rennae Stubbs, wrote that “I hope we see those two play each other for another decade at least!”
Coco Gauff ensured Emma Raducanu exits Australian Open in battle which shown ‘the future of tennis’. (GETTY IMAGES)
In the end, it was Gauff’s retrieving skills that made the difference, as she defended like Djokovic throughout the second-set tie-break. You had to feel for Raducanu, who kept firing the ball into the corners with her scudding groundstrokes, only for Gauff to stretch out a long arm and chip it back into play.
In a nervy finish, Gauff brought Raducanu forward with a drop shot, and then outwitted her with a crafty lob-volley, before erupting in a leaping celebration that revealed how much she wanted this win.
“We both started off rocky,” said Gauff in her on-court interview, “but I think the match was good quality for the most part. I imagine we were both nervous. This was a long anticipated match-up basically since the draw came out. I’m glad both of us handled the pressure pretty well.”
The statistics don’t look all that pretty on paper, with Gauff clocking up 41 unforced errors and Raducanu 42 – more than twice as many as their winner counts in both cases.
But then, it is hard to hit winners when your opponent covers the court like spidercam. I can’t recall watching a match between two such mobile women. They seemed to float over the court, barely touching it with their sneakers. Yet the constant squeaks of rubber on acrylic betrayed the intensity of the footwork.
Britain’s Emma Raducanu in action during her second round match against Coco Gauff. (Loren Elliott/Reuters)
Another reason for the high unforced error count was the ambition on display. Both women were throwing haymaker after haymaker, in a determined effort to be the one shaping the pattern of the rallies.
This fitted with Gauff’s pre-match confession that she had spent a good chunk of her off-season learning to box. Admittedly, there was the odd point where Gauff switched to looping her forehand rather than hitting through it, but for the most part she was eager for the quick kill.
Gauff was comfortably the bigger server, averaging 103mph on her first delivery to Raducanu’s 94, but it was Raducanu who had the more aggressive return. Had she been able to practise more thoroughly in the build-up to this event, rather than being disrupted by an ankle injury, she could have given the No7 seed an even bigger scare.
Raducanu rather gave away the first set with a spray of forehand errors that allowed Gauff to break for 4-2. It seemed as though she might go quietly when she was broken again early in the second set, donating a couple of sloppy double-faults. She also seemed to be feeling out her side or stomach as if she was in pain. Still, rather than capitulating, she squared her shoulders and began playing with greater accuracy.
Emma Raducanu packs her bag to exit the Australian Open after a battle with Coco Gauff. (REUTERS)
For much of that second set, Raducanu was the one forcing the pace. She even had a couple of set points when Gauff served at 4-5. Again, though, Gauff went into defensive lockdown mode, and it was Raducanu who missed – first with a backhand drive and then a drop-shot that just caught the net-tape. Such is Gauff’s extraordinary sprinting speed – which could probably have made her a track-and-field star had she so wished – that she would probably have made it to the ball anyway.
Instead, Gauff completed her 6-3, 7-6 victory, and thus became the first woman to chalk up 100 WTA Tour wins before the age of 19 since Caroline Wozniacki in 2009. She might be younger than Raducanu but in tennis terms she is more experienced, having played almost 200 competitive matches at various levels to Raducanu’s 130-odd.
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