"I was lucky I had it when it mattered" - Raducanu opens up about US Open triumph

Emma Raducanu described her US Open as near perfect admitting that she was lucky to get one of those crazy weeks when it mattered.

Tennis players know really well what the zone is and most of the have it a couple of times a year. The zone is a state of confidence where players simply play automatic tennis which results in some incredible results. Medvedev was pretty automatic last year at the US Open and so was Raducanu. She honestly spoke about her triumph realizing how and why it happened:

"There were times for sure that I was coming out with some outrageous shots. Sometimes in your career you feel like everything is automatic, you can go for whatever shot you want and it’s going to land. Those weeks don’t come by very often. You might have one or two a year. For me, I was lucky that I had three like pretty much when it mattered really”.

Even so, Raducanu feels that not everything went perfectly. She can clearly remember a couple of instances where things could have gone badly:

“I wasn’t always playing perfect tennis. Like in my qualifying, I remember scrapping through some, my second-round qualifying match (against Bolkvadze), and in my fourth round, I remember I was so nervous in the first set and didn’t necessarily feel like I was playing great, but it’s definitely a lot about holding your nerve on those sort of matches in big courts”

Summing up her thoughts Rdaucanu underlined that she understands that most of the time things won't look like that but she's come to terms with that:

“To be honest, I don’t think I was expecting to play US Open tennis every single week, because I knew myself I was so zoned out that I was playing really, really well, some of my best tennis. But I’d say even though maybe in the beginning of the year I was saying, Look, like, doesn’t matter, no pressure, I think that I didn’t necessarily buy into it as much as I probably do now. I think that it took me a while, but right now I most enjoy the challenge of continuously coming back and getting back up."