No one, it seems, had ever seen anything quite like it.
The 18-year-old Emma Raducanu vs. 19-year-old Leylah Fernandez 2021 US Open women’s singles final was the first major final in the Open Era, men’s or women’s, featuring two unseeded players, and the first featuring two teens in more than two decades.
When the 100-1 odds Raducanu ultimately walked away with the trophy, defeating Fernandez, 6-4, 6-3, she was also the first qualifier, male or female, to win a major in the Open Era; at No. 150 the second-lowest ranked woman to win the tournament since the rankings were introduced in 1975.
As a result, you might imagine that the US Open would be Raducanu’s personal favorite tour stop. But as the now-22-year-old confided ahead of the 2025 US Open, returning to Flushing Meadows these last few years has been anything but easy for her. The white-hot global spotlight that suddenly turned her way, the endorsement offers, the fast-mounting expectations, the inevitable trolling on social media, proved too much to handle. It would affect her both on and off the court.
“I really struggled when I came back in 2022,” Raducanu reflected this week. “I didn’t enjoy coming back here. I think now is the first time that I feel like I can come back to the US Open and really enjoy the memories that I made here and be proud of that and see it as a happy place.”
Ironically, it was Fernandez, who made a tearful exit from that defeat four years ago, that has had an easier time returning to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.
“I was super-excited to be back in New York the past couple of years because of what I experienced in 2021, the love that the crowd and the New York fans showed for myself and my tennis game, the passion that they brought during my matches,” said Fernandez after an opening-round 6-2, 6-1 win over fellow Canadian Rebecca Marino on Sunday in Stadium 17. “It’s been a dream for me to experience that.
“Everybody deals with pressure, with stress, a little bit differently,” she added. “We both go through the same path, but maybe we deal with it differently.”
Neither player has had too much success on these courts since their shared breakthrough. Until a 6-1, 6-2 dismissal of Japanese qualifier Ena Shibahara on Sunday in Louis Armstrong Stadium, Raducanu hadn’t won a single US Open match since. Fernandez, 22, was one out of three in her last three appearances.
“I feel in a much better place now. I think compared to four years ago, I feel relaxed, I feel happy,” said Raducanu. “I’m just more aware now of everything that is possible. When I won in ‘21, I didn’t know about this world of potential negativity and bringing people down, bringing players down. I’d say that kind of affected me a lot in the last few years. It still definitely gets me from time to time but, overall, I think I can enjoy what I’m doing day to day a lot more.”
Who knows what the future holds. After precipitous drops, both players are back inside the Top 40 in the PIF WTA Rankings; both players are through to the second round at the US Open once again. As fate would have it, they find themselves in the same quarter of the draw.
