Raducanu passes difficult first-round test at Wimbledon
WTA
Emma Raducanu faced Alison Van Uytvanck in the first round of the 2022 Wimbledon Championships and she did really well.
Despite most of the tennis fans knowing Raducanu for her incredible 2021 US Open triumph, she showed her skillset already a few months before that.
At Wimbledon last year, Raducanu beat some good players, such as Vitalia Diatchenko, Marketa Vondrousova, and Sorana Cirstea to reach the fourth round of the tournament.
This year, she entered the tournament as one of the dark horses, and she did really well in her first match. Her opponent was Alison Van Uytvanck, who is one of the grass-court specialists.
The WTA World No. 46 player played 14 matches on the grass courts prior to the third Grand Slam of the season and won 12 of them, winning two grass-court titles. On the other hand, Raducanu was coming back from an injury that she picked up in Nottingham.
In the first two games of the first set, both players had a few break points, but both managed to hold their service games, and fans on the Centre Court at the All England Club didn't see a break until the seventh game.
Both players broke each other's serve three times in a row before Raducanu won the first set 6-4. In the second set, it was the home crowd favorite who got broken first.
However, she was able to recover. She broke Van Uytvanck's serve twice in the remainder of the set to win the match 6-4, 6-4 in an hour and 42 minutes.
After the match, she was happy about her win but also about the support that she received from the fans in London.
"Thank you to everyone who's been here supporting me, especially through the tough times. I know Alison is an extremely tricky opponent. I played her last summer, and it's extremely tricky to neutralize her serve. But I'm just happy to stay another day."
