Most fledging British stars spend years attempting to crack America. Emma Raducanu did it in three giddy weeks. And such was the talent and breathtaking scale of her first grand slam victory – which ended together with her blitzing an ace earlier than collapsing to the ground and rubbing her eyes, as if to verify she was not in some inconceivable dream – it felt totally pure to right away speculate the place it ranked within the pantheon of the nation’s nice sporting triumphs.
Excessive, for positive. Even perhaps highest of all. Definitely for a person.
In any case, by no means in tennis historical past has anybody fought by means of three qualifying rounds of a grand slam earlier than profitable your complete match, not to mention an 18-year-old who the bookies rated as a 400-1 outsider. What’s extra, she did it with out dropping a set. If a younger author dared pitch such a script to Hollywood, it could have been fastballed into the closest garbage can.
But it was all true. The $2.5m (£1.8m) cheque. The reward from legends resembling Martina Navratilova. The height TV viewers of 9.2 million Britons keen her on to her 6-4 6-3 victory over the Canadian Leylah Fernandez. Even a uncommon message from the Queen, one ER congratulating one other.
“I don’t really feel any stress,” Raducanu stated afterwards, with a conviction that was as startling as her tennis. “I’m nonetheless solely 18 years previous. I’m simply having a free swing at something that comes my approach.”
Later, with an ease that comes naturally to her, she joked that her first purpose on the US Open had been to earn sufficient cash to interchange her misplaced Airpods.