Damian Reilly Damian Reilly

Emma Raducanu can save tennis

She’s exactly what the sport, and Britain, needs

Sarah Stier/Getty Images

Something perfect at the death of summer: Emma Raducanu in full flight, smoking winners up the lines and progressing without dropping a set into the last eight of the US Open at the improbable age of 18. The very best, in tennis as in all sports, almost without exception, make it look beautiful – it’s why we can’t take our eyes off them (because beauty is an element-bending superpower).

Raducanu makes playing tennis look beautiful. As she waits to receive serve, poised and utterly focused, it can appear as if she has arrived on court straight from the pages of a fashion magazine. There is an unmistakeable Hollywood quality, too, to the manner in which she is now realising her potential at Flushing Meadows, having flashed into the sport-watching world’s consciousness at Wimbledon.

The way Raducanu moves is breathtaking – her athleticism and coordination, apparent in everything she does — is mesmerising and flawless.

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