Her confidence growing and her game blossoming further with every match, Emma Raducanu produced another supreme performance under pressure as she dismantled Amanda Anisimova 6-1, 6-3 to reach the quarter-finals of the Miami Open.
With one of the best tournament runs of her career, Raducanu will contest her first WTA 1000 quarter-final. She will return to the top 50 for the first time since her eight-month layoff in 2023 after undergoing surgery to both wrists and her ankle.
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On paper, this was supposed to be a fiercely difficult match. Anisimova is a former teenage prodigy who reached the French Open semi-finals at 17 in 2019 before taking a break from professional tennis in 2023 to address her mental health and burnout. This season has signalled her recovery, winning a first WTA 1000 title at the Qatar Open last month and then reaching the fourth round in Miami by beating the Indian Wells champion Mirra Andreeva.
In this match, however, it was Raducanu who produced another faultless performance. Over the past week, she has demonstrated some of the best tennis of her career outside her 2021 US Open title run. Her serve and forehand, with which she has struggled for the past few years, have been excellent and she has frustrated opponents with her solid defence and cutting backhand slice.
At her best, Anisimova is one of the cleanest ball-strikers in the world, her timing and hand-eye coordination the driving force behind her teenage breakthrough. From the start of this match, however, she simply could not put the ball in court. She had some understandable excuses. Her tough three-set win against Andreeva ended late on Sunday night and she had received a medical timeout for blisters on her right hand, which led to criticism from Andreeva.
The writing was on the wall for Anisimova as she ended the first set by essentially tanking the final game. Between the sets, the American received a medical timeout, eventually returning to the court with her right wrist taped after the trainer had massaged her forearm. Although Anisimova’s level slightly improved in the second set, Raducanu refused to let her focus and intensity drop.
“I felt something was maybe going down on the other side,” Raducanu told Sky Sports. “It’s really difficult to stay focused when your opponent is making some errors and then all of a sudden just blasting the lines and winners and you have no idea what’s going on. Those matches are almost tougher to stay focused the whole time. When things are, in a way, more normal, it’s just like you know you have to be locked in every single point. I’m really proud of how I came through that.”
At the end of another brilliant win, Raducanu’s performance earned her a standing ovation from the newest temporary member of her team, the British coach and commentator Mark Petchey, alongside the former player Jane O’Donoghue. The timing of Raducanu’s breakthrough this week has been fascinating considering she had opted to end her trial period with the Slovak coach Vladimir Platenik on the eve of the tournament.
After each victory, Raducanu has repeatedly noted that, surrounded by people she trusts and knows well, the positive vibes in her team have played a significant role in her form on the court. “I’ve come a long way in the last week,” she said. “Since Indian Wells, I wasn’t necessarily feeling great about my tennis, about everything, but this week I have some really good people around me who I trust, who I have fun with off the court as well. That’s extremely important I think.
“For me, who’s very expressive, when I play my best I’m definitely authentic, true to myself and creative. I feel when I’m boxed in into a regimented way, I’m not able to express myself in the same way. So I’m happy with how I realised that this week as well.”
