Emma Raducanu

Emma Raducanu (born November 13, 2002, Toronto, Ontario, Canada) is a British tennis player who made history at the 2021 U.S. Open when she became the first qualifier, male or female, to win a Grand Slam singles title. Her win made her the first British woman to win a Grand Slam title since Virginia Wade in 1977. She achieved the feat at the age of 18, making her the youngest Grand Slam singles champion since Maria Sharapova in 2004. Raducanu is known for her aggressive baseline play, clean ball striking, powerful ground strokes, and fast, accurate serves, as well as her ability to anticipate her opponents’ shots, position herself adeptly, and apply pressure in return games.

Early life, training, and education

Raducanu is the only child of Chinese mother Renee (née Dongmei Zhai) and Romanian father Ion (anglicized as Ian) Raducanu, both of whom work in the financial sector. When she was two years old, the family moved from Toronto to Bromley—London’s southeasternmost borough. Raducanu thus holds dual British and Canadian citizenship and is fluent in English, Romanian, and Chinese. She started playing tennis at the age of five but participated in several other sports and activities as well, including ballet, tap dancing, karting, and golf. However, tennis ultimately became her greatest passion.

Raducanu began training at the Parklangley Club under coach Harry Bushnell at the age of six and continued working with him until she was 10 or 11. She then shifted her training to the Bromley Tennis Centre, which was adjacent to her secondary school. There she trained under coach Andrew Richardson before advancing to the Lawn Tennis Association’s National Tennis Centre during her final years of secondary school.

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Raducanu attended Newstead Wood School, a highly selective secondary school in Orpington, Greater London. She graduated in 2021, completing A levels in mathematics and economics. She credits her time at the school with helping her game, saying in 2021, “I find it’s actually helped me with my on-court career as well in the way that I can absorb a lot of information. I feel that on court I’m more tactically astute than some others.”

Early career

Raducanu made her debut at an International Tennis Federation (ITF) tournament in 2015, notably playing her first game right after turning 13, the mandatory minimum age. She won that tournament, the Nike Junior International, becoming the youngest winner of an ITF under-18 event at the time. She went on to win six more junior titles. A standout year came in 2018: In addition to winning four of her seven titles, she reached the quarterfinals in the girls’ singles events at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open and finished the year with a career-high junior ranking of number 20. Her junior career concluded in 2019.

Professional career and breakthrough

Raducanu turned professional in 2018, playing on the ITF women’s circuit alongside her junior career and winning two senior titles that year. In June 2021 she made her debut in a Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) tournament when she received a wild card entry to play at the Viking Open in Nottingham. She lost in the first round but reached the quarterfinals of her next event, the Nottingham Trophy, a week later.

She then received a wild card entry into the 2021 Wimbledon Championships and, in her first major Grand Slam event, reached the fourth round, defeating, among others, future Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova. She thus became the youngest British woman to reach the fourth round at Wimbledon in the open era.

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Raducanu next reached the final of the WTA 125 event in Chicago, losing to Clara Tauson in the title match. In the U.S. Open that followed a week later, she entered the tournament ranked 150 and had to play the qualifiers, all three of which she won in straight sets. She then went on to dominate the main draw, winning seven matches in a row, all in straight sets, including the final against fellow teenager, Canadian Leylah Fernandez, to win the women’s singles title. She thus became the first qualifier, male or female, to win a Grand Slam title, the first British woman to win a Grand Slam title since Virginia Wade in 1977, and the first woman in the open era to win a Grand Slam title in just her second attempt. She also won the 2021 WTA Newcomer of the Year Award.

Subsequent career struggles and performance

Following her U.S. Open win, Raducanu struggled to adapt to the attention and expectations that came with her newfound fame, as well as the demands of life on the WTA tour. She was seeded for all four Grand Slam events in 2022 but lost in the second round at the Australian Open, the French Open, and Wimbledon before a humbling first-round loss at the U.S. Open, where she was the defending champion. The only positive in a tough year was reaching her career-best women’s singles ranking of number 10 in July.

Raducanu has also struggled with injuries. After being forced to pull out of a couple of tournaments in late 2022 and exiting the 2023 Australian Open in the second round, she underwent minor surgeries on her left ankle as well as on both wrists. She thus spent a large part of the year recovering before returning in 2024 to improved performances, including reaching the fourth round at Wimbledon and the semifinals at the Rothesay Open in Nottingham. She ended the year back in the top 100.

Raducanu had a better year in 2025 at the Grand Slams, reaching the second round at the French Open and the third round at the other three majors. She also reached the quarterfinals of the Miami Open and the semifinals at the Mubadala Citi DC Open but continued a worrying trend of early exits in other tournaments. Her wins in the first two rounds at the U.S. Open were her first at the event since her title win in 2021. In 2026 she reached her first WTA final since her U.S. Open triumph, doing so at the Transylvania Open in Romania; she lost the final to Sorana Cirstea.