Emma Raducanu strode back into the British summer with the kind of performance her supporters have been waiting for, dismantling Russian qualifier Anna Blinkova 6-0, 6-3 in her first-round match at the Queen's Club Championships. The whole contest was over inside an hour.
It was the 23-year-old's first competitive outing on grass this season, and she played as if she could not wait to get started. From the opening serve Raducanu was front-footed and aggressive, taking time away from Blinkova with crisp returns and stepping inside the baseline at every opportunity. The first set disappeared in a blur of clean winners; she did not concede a single game.
A wobble, then composure
The wind picked up at the start of the second set and Blinkova, finally finding some rhythm, struck back. The Russian broke Raducanu twice as the Briton's serve briefly deserted her — a flurry of double faults handing the qualifier a foothold. But Raducanu has learned, the hard way, how to ride out these stretches. She regrouped, landed a decisive break of her own to lead 5-3, and then closed out the win on her second match point.
Speaking after the match Raducanu admitted she had been nervous about how she would feel on the surface again, after months of fitness setbacks and a difficult European clay swing. “The first set felt like a release,” she told the on-court interviewer in remarks paraphrased by reporters at the venue. “You always wonder how a comeback will go. To play like that in front of a home crowd — it means a lot.”
The context: a tough lead-in
The performance is significant precisely because of what preceded it. Raducanu arrived at Queen's Club having lost in the opening round of the French Open and battled through a post-viral illness that had compromised her training. A similarly early exit at the Strasbourg Open last month had only deepened the questions.
Yet the Briton has always reserved her best tennis for fast surfaces — her US Open title remains the touchstone — and grass, by reputation, should suit her further. The W6 Aegon — the new women's tournament now sharing the Queen's Club fortnight with the long-running men's event — gives her a marquee home setting in which to find form ahead of the All England Club.
What happens next
Raducanu now faces Romania's Sorana Cirstea in the second round — a tougher test, and a useful gauge of where her game sits less than three weeks before Wimbledon. A win there would tee up a likely quarter-final encounter with one of the seeds.
The wider verdict from the opening day at Queen's was unambiguous. After a year of patchy results and recovery, Raducanu’s grass season has begun the way she will have hoped — sharp, controlled, and, for an hour at least, almost untouchable.
