Dethroned US Open champion Emma Raducanu can only envy New York’s new star Iga Swiatek

Raducanu’s Flushing Meadows reign officially came to an end on Saturday when Swiatek sealed a straight-sets victory against Ons Jabeur in the final. After a first-round defeat in New York, the 19-year-old Briton’s dramatic fall of 72 places will be confirmed in Monday’s updated world rankings.

Wasting no time in trying to work her way back up the list, Raducanu has signed up for the low-key WTA 250 event on the outdoor hard courts in Portoroz, a town on the Adriatic coast with a population of 3,000. With the draw having been made on Saturday, using her ranking of No.11 last week, she is the top seed and will play Dayana Yastremska, the world No.89 from Ukraine, in the opening round on Monday.

Remarkably Raducanu is closer in points to the new world No.2 Jabeur (a gap of 4,364) than Jabeur is to the No.1 spot (5,275). Swiatek is so dominant on the WTA Tour at present that she will comfortably remain at the top of the rankings into next year even if she were to lose every match she plays for the remainder of the season.

Raducanu, who has not won three consecutive matches since winning last year’s US Open, must envy Swiatek’s consistency. The 21-year-old from Poland is the first player to win seven WTA tournaments in a single season since Serena Williams in 2014.

As Williams bows out from the sport, Swiatek is establishing herself as the new force in the women’s game. After winning two grand slam titles at the French Open in 2020 and 2022, her US Open triumph is her first major success on a hard court. With a versatile all-round game, she also has the tools to win Wimbledon, where she claimed the junior title in 2018.

“She got that second grand slam trophy at Roland Garros early in her career and now there is no pressure on her,” Mats Wilander, the Eurosport pundit and former world No.1, said. “The way that she is going, the pace that she is playing at, it’s just a different level. She looks so hungry as well all the time; it’s going to be tough to slow her down.

“She is so energetic in everything she does and that shows when she is playing because very few players are able to do what she is doing. She just looks comfortable as the No.1 and I don’t think that makes any difference to her. She is chasing something all the time and I think that is improvement.

“She has a lot to thank Rafa [Nadal, one of her idols] for because she plays very intensely. There is no let-up emotionally – she gets a bit more frustrated than Rafa at times but the intensity is there in every detail and her footwork is unbelievable.

“She has taken on the role [as No.1] to use it as a platform. It suits her because she is so energetic and determined. She is going to be remembered as one of the best athletes in Poland of all time.”

In the aftermath of her victory on Saturday night, hundreds of Swiatek’s Polish supporters gathered outside the ESPN television studio on site to acclaim her. Such scenes were unthinkable last month when she lost in the third round of warm-up tournaments in Toronto and Cincinnati and launched into a rant about the lighter regular duty balls used in the women’s draws during the American hard-court swing. Her ability to overcome this in time for the US Open is a testament to her adaptability.

“At the beginning of this swing I had to really force myself to make some technical adjustments,” Swiatek said. “Sometimes we have many things actually to think about on the court. Sometimes I wasn’t able to do it every time, so I was making a lot of mistakes.

“Then I finally accepted that I’m going to make those mistakes. It’s not going to be like on slow surfaces where I can build a rally, then be really calm and just finish. It’s going to be more risk and less control, for sure, so I accepted that. It got a bit more natural and I used more intuition. That was the thing that actually let me be more free.”

The rest of the locker room will be concerned to hear Swiatek describe this title as “confirmation for me that the sky is the limit”. She will have to carefully handle an increase in attention now that she has cracked New York – the actor Matthew Perry is among thousands of new followers on her Instagram account – but the urge to constantly improve remains.

“For now I have got to settle with what’s happening right now,” Swiatek said. “I’m going to see how I’m going to react. Winning the US Open is different than winning a slam in Europe or in Australia, because I don’t know how the popularity thing is going to change. I’m going to observe and learn.

“For the future, I know I still have a lot to improve on court. That’s something that I’m excited for, because maybe it’s just going to get easier to play these matches.”

Great Britain’s Alfie Hewett won his sixth grand slam men’s wheelchair singles title at the US Open on Sunday. The 24-year-old defeated Shingo Kunieda 7-6 (7-2) 6-1 to deny the Japanese world No.1 a first calendar grand slam.

– The Times

Originally published as Dethroned US Open champion Emma Raducanu can only envy New York’s new star Iga Swiatek