Emma Raducanu was not fully committed to tennis until very recently and the Brit had no idea how soon she would be proven right in her decision.
Emma Raducanu
rose to fame last year after becoming the first qualifier to win a
Grand Slam event, following her victory at September's US Open. Raducanu shocked the world when prevailing at Flushing Meadows at just 18 years old writing her name in tennis history. It came only two years after she fully committed to tennis which was revealed in an interview with Harper's Bazaar:
“The moment [that] it really clicked in that I wanted to be a tennis player was actually pretty recently. I
kept my education up all the way until finishing my A Levels, so maybe
mid-GCSEs I was like, ‘okay, I’m not going to go to college, I’m going
to try and be a professional tennis player, see how it works."
During her interview, Raducanu also spoke about that famous night in
New York, and how her victory at Flushing Meadows changed her life. She said:
“The career moment that changed my life was probably the US Open. On the match point, I mean it was the best moment of my career for
sure. Since then I’ve had a lot of new things that have been exciting,
and yeah that is probably the moment. The most
surreal moment has probably been when I landed that ace, because it was
just a second of I had no idea what happened, what I was doing, where I
was. I think just that sense of unknown was pretty surreal.”