September 08, (THEWILL) – A day after the impressive teenage US Open star Carlos Alcaraz was forced to retire midway through the second set of his quarter-final against Felix Auger-Aliassime, British teenager Emma Raducanu stomped on to the semi-finals with an impressive 6-3 6-4 win over Olympic champion Belinda Bencic.
The fairytale progress of the 18-year-old, which was truncated due to breathing difficulties in her home Grand Slam at Wimbledon earlier in the year, has taken off beautifully, with impressive wins followed by impressive wins all the way till Wednesday’s win over Bencic.
Without losing a single set, the teenager is through to the semi-finals of the final major of the year in an unabashed defiance of her world ranking of 150. The controlled and matured manner in which she dispatched the 11th seed was only bettered by her historic feat, which will see her climb into the top 100.
The victory made Raducanu the first female qualifier in history to reach the last four in the Open Era as she continued to awe tennis fans and demonstrate composure and focus well beyond her 18 years. It tells of how far she could have gone if she was not inhibited by breathing issues at the All England Club in her Grand Slam debut.
She has been one of the teenagers showing promise of exploits for the next generation of tennis icons. The other, Carlos Alcaraz, was overtaken by the physical exertion required to perform at the highest levels against the best players.
The toll of the Spaniard’s headline-grabbing Grand Slam run ultimately proved too much for Alcaraz to sustain. The 18-year-old ultimately threw in the towel at 3-1 down in the second set after losing the opening set 6-3 to Auger-Aliassime.
It brought Alcaraz’s sensational tournament, that included incredible five-setter victories against French Open finalist Stefanos Tsitsipas and Peter Gojowczyk before reaching his first Grand Slam quarter-final, to an end. Those lengthy matches impacted the 18-year-old’s game as was obvious from the start against Auger-Aliassime.
There will be a lot more to come from both of them, with the inclusion of the Canadian Leylah Fernandez, another 18-year-old, who beat Elina Svitolina, the fifth-seeded Ukrainian 6-3 3-6 7-6 to become the youngest US Open semi-finalist since Maria Sharapova in 2005.
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
