09/10/2021 20:15
Clarín.com
sports
Updated 9/11/2021 7:23 PM
British royalty has a new princess.
Or at least the title that Queen Elizabeth is going to grant him.
Because
Emma Raducanu, just 18 years old, beat the Canadian Leylah Fernandez, 19,
in the second youngest final in history at the US Open and entered the Olympus of world tennis.
It was 6-4 and 6-3, in one hour and 51 minutes, for the number 150 in the world, who broke a black streak for the players of her country in Grand Slams and achieved an unprecedented feat arriving at the tournament from qualifying.
The nerves seemed to play a little more in Fernández's head than in Raducanu's in the beginning.
The Canadian suffered
six break-points
in just her first service game and was unable to close her two lead situations.
He showed poise
, yes, to recover on several of those occasions and at times (points, more than moments) a great tennis, attacking with courage on each of those occasions, making Raducanu run and using the entire width of the court.
However, she made too many mistakes (7) and in that balance the British, better planted, taking over the center of the field, marked differences.
Duglas Cordero, Leylah Fernande's physical trainer, and Irene Exevea, mother of the young tennis player.
Photo AP Photo / Seth Wenig
Anyway, things
turned quite quickly
: in the third game it was Raducanu who, on serve, offered four break chances and his rival broke his serve to leave everything as at the beginning.
With a curiosity: all the points of the game except one were defined by errors.
And in that general "dirt" of the game, Fernández, with isolated blows of great flight, seemed to get slight advantages.
The feeling was that the Canadian appeared better positioned to put potential winners, while the British required a little more elaboration and "work" of the point.
From the fourth game
both seemed to settle
and, beyond logical plateaus for such a defining match between young people of their ages, suddenly the break-points disappeared.
It was not surprising, however, that they returned to say present
at the moment of truth
in that first set: when Fernández had to serve with the obligation to maintain the service to stretch the set, at 4-5.
There Raducanu (
coincidence or causality? No player won more than four games in a set in the entire tournament
) brought out the best of herself in the face of the doubts that appeared in Fernández and, although her mistakes cost her three break and set points , took advantage of the fourth with a great winning drive and there, after 58 minutes of play, he took the lead.
Emma Raducanu celebrates winning the first set.
Photo REUTERS
The reasons can be multiple: decay after letting the first set escape, a fatigue that his rival did not drag into the tournament (from the third round on, all his meetings were in three sets) or simply start something cold, but Fernández
started badly. the second set: 0-1 and 0-40.
And yet again she managed to recover, winning five points in a row by taking advantage of two winners of her own and a couple of Raducanu errors and above all taking the inertia of that game to the next, to take advantage, she did, of her chances of breaking and try to give
a new direction to the party
.
Did not, of
course, with two spectacular setbacks Raducanu, a player who clearly
was not the favorite of the public
in this final but that his
Britishness
to -impasible flower skin, concentrada- was steadfast in his mission and could return the break immediately. But there would be more in his repertoire, by breaking the serve once again with a
great reading
of the situations that allowed him to go from 1-2 and serve rival to 5-2.
Fernández's decline cannot be explained without assessing the attributes of Raducanu, a tennis player with amazing ease to hit parallels and who, even so,
does not dazzle with any particular blow
but with the ease and correctness with which she handles
all of them
.
It was said that the Canadian woke up more sighs and more "oh" with some impacts, but that it was her rival who controlled the game
with her wrist and with her head.
To recognize the Canadian of Ecuadorian and Filipino descent is that she
never lost her smile
, not even in the worst moments.
A curiosity: his sister, from the family box, asked him to continue smiling, to confuse Emma, perhaps?
Fernandez 'sister telling her to smile.
🥺 #USOpen pic.twitter.com/rVVV23ss6V
- Tennis GIFs 🎾🎥 (@tennis_gifs) September 11, 2021
Perhaps that adolescent unconsciousness was what allowed him to
get into the game
, forcing even a break point in the game in which his rival served for the championship.
At that time, 5-3 and 30-40, a scrape forced Raducanu to be treated by the doctor, which at some point bothered Leylah and that was when her family asked her to remain focused and with a smile in front of her.
That arrest could be dangerous, beyond the fact that the British was not having a good time.
Would I return in condition?
More or less: he returned to recover, regain the disadvantage and solve the lawsuit with an ace: 6-4 and 6-3, straight into the story.
The
first British woman to win a Grand Slam since 1977
(Virginia Wade, at Wimbledon, the last), the
first player to emerge from the classification to obtain a
Major
in the Open Era
, champion
without losing a single set
in the entire tournament ... Now, in addition, it will jump from position 150 to number 23 in the world ranking.
In short,
a Cinderella whose crystal shoes will shine forever
in the New York sky.
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