Emma Raducanu fought off sickness to become the first British singles winner at the French Open in two years. And she was then followed into the second round by her fellow British No.2 Jacob Fearnley – who got his revenge on Andy Murray’s 2024 conqueror Stan Wawrinka.
The former US Open champion needed a five-minute medical timeout in the first set against Chinese world No.43 Wang Xinju – and later reported she woke up feeling “really sick”.
But in a rollercoaster match seeing 16 breaks of serve, she recovered to win 7-5 4-6 6-3 in two hours and 44 minutes – her equal longest ever claycourt match – without her part-time coach Mark Petchey on court.
She will next face four-time champion Iga Swiatek. Raducanu elected to miss the French Open last year and all six Brits lost in the first round of the singles.
Playing the first match on Court 8 starting at 11am local time, she has already improved on that stat.
“I’m glad to kind of get us off to a strong start,” she said. “Saw Jacob was a set up (Fearnley beat Stan Wawrinka 7-6 6-3 6-2). He’s been doing really well. Rooting for everybody. Katie (Boulter) is about to play.
“I think all of us have been doing really well on the clay this year, kind of coming through. I think we all have, you know, a good chance, a good opportunity to do as best as we can.
“Yeah, I think it’s great for British tennis. I think it’s great for all of us to have competition and healthy competition to want to kind of improve and, yeah, do better.”
Three more British players are in action on Tuesday – world No.5 Jack Draper, Cam Norrie and Sonay Kartal.
Raducanu, who had acupuncture before the tournament after suffering a back spasm in Strasbourg, said: “I think I’m actually really proud of today’s match, more so than I think a lot of the matches that I played recently or in general, because I woke up and I felt really sick, to be honest. I felt bad from the morning.
“I don’t know why I just have struggled today. The last few days, just not really been feeling great.
“Yeah, I guess I’m managing a few things. But despite all of that, being able to come through against a really tough opponent today, I’m really proud of.
“I was just trying and fighting through that. It was really difficult. You know, in the first set, like, I just felt it straightaway and it didn’t really go away throughout the whole match.
“To have kind of come through that and overcome how I was feeling, I’m really happy with, and I didn’t let it kind of, you know, it would have been easy to kind of let it drag me down.
“I think after the second set I went to the bathroom and just really regrouped. I was just thinking to try to get off to a good start more than anything in the third because I knew that would help me keep my spirits up, keep the fight, keep as much energy as I had.n I’m really happy that I was able to do that and give myself a small cushion at the back end.
“I feel better. I had, like, a good amount of food. I think it was also maybe just, you know, like an earlier wakeup than usual for me. Maybe my body was just lagging a little bit. After a good feed and some rest, I think I’ll probably be okay. I’m glad I can have some rest and hopefully rest up before playing Wednesday.”
Content Source: www.express.co.uk