{"id":6454,"date":"2026-01-21T12:00:03","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T12:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/?p=6454"},"modified":"2026-01-21T12:00:03","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T12:00:03","slug":"australian-open-2026-emma-raducanu-loses-in-second-round-what-went-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/?p=6454","title":{"rendered":"Australian Open 2026: Emma Raducanu loses in second round – what went wrong?"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Raducanu made encouraging progress last year, climbing back into the world’s top 30 and playing more matches than in any previous season of her career.<\/p>\n

However, the off-season technical work she planned to put in with coach Francisco Roig – who helped Rafael Nadal win 16 of his 22 major titles – was compromised by a foot injury.<\/p>\n

When Raducanu returned in 2026, a tweak to her forehand – a higher and longer takeback, designed to add more spin – was clear.<\/p>\n

But she seemed to lack trust in the shot against Potapova, landing 70% of her forehand returns in – compared to 96% from her opponent – and making 19 unforced errors off that wing.<\/p>\n

“I want to be playing a different way. The misalignment with how I’m playing right now and how I want to be playing is something I want to work on,” Raducanu said.<\/p>\n

“There are definitely pockets of me playing how I want to play, and it comes out in flashes, which is a positive. But it’s not how I want to be consistently.<\/p>\n

“It’s not going to fall into place straight away, but the more I work on how I want to be playing, it will be more of my identity every time I step onto the court.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Raducanu made encouraging progress last year, climbing back into the world’s top 30 and playing more matches than in any previous season of her career. However, the off-season technical work she planned to put in with coach Francisco Roig – who helped Rafael Nadal win 16 of his 22 major titles – was compromised by<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6455,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}