Emma Raducanu's Quiet Comeback: From the 2021 US Open Miracle to Home Grass

Five years on, the thing Emma Raducanu did in 2021 still does not sound real when you say it out loud. A British 18-year-old, ranked around 150th in the world, walked into the US Open as a qualifier — meaning she had to win three matches just to reach the main draw — and then won the entire tournament without dropping a single set. Ten matches. Twenty straight sets. A Grand Slam title, at her second major ever, against another teenager in the final, in front of a stunned Arthur Ashe Stadium. No qualifier, man or woman, had ever done it before. Nobody has done it since.

It was the most beautiful fairy tale tennis had produced in a generation. It was also, it turned out, almost too big to survive — and the years that followed were so hard that the real story of Emma Raducanu is not the miracle at all. It is what happened after, and the quieter, healthier, happier version of her now winning matches on the home grass at Queen's, with Wimbledon a few weeks away.

This week she beat Anna Blinkova 6-0, 6-3 in front of a home crowd that has never stopped loving her. And if you have followed the whole journey, that ordinary, professional win meant more than it looked.

The fairy tale that was almost too big

Go back to that September fortnight in New York and it is still dizzying. Raducanu had played one previous Grand Slam — a run to the fourth round at Wimbledon that ended when she struggled physically and retired, drawing a wave of unkind commentary. A few weeks later, ranked outside the world's top 100, she flew to New York to play the qualifying event, the unglamorous pre-tournament scramble most fans never watch.

And then she simply did not lose. Match after match, round after round, the 18-year-old played fearless, clean, beautiful tennis, and the impossible kept not happening — she kept winning, and winning, and the world slowly realised it was watching something that does not occur. She beat fellow teenager Leylah Fernandez in the final. She became, overnight, a global superstar, a national hero, the face on every front page in Britain, the subject of more attention than any 18-year-old should ever have to carry.

The trophy was the easy part. The fame was the trap.

The hard years

Here is the part the fairy tale never warns you about: winning a Grand Slam at 18, as a qualifier, with no time to grow into it, is one of the most disorienting things that can happen to a young athlete. Raducanu had no ranking to defend the achievement with, no body of work underneath it, no slow build that prepares a player for that level of scrutiny. She had one impossible fortnight and then the weight of an entire country's expectations, immediately, all at once.

The years that followed were brutal. Injuries piled up — she eventually needed surgery on both wrists and an ankle in 2023, wiping out much of that season. She went through coach after coach, a revolving door of partnerships that never quite settled, each change dissected in public. Her ranking slid. First-round losses became common. The British press, which had crowned her, turned the same intensity toward every defeat. The phrase "one-slam wonder" started to follow her around. For a young woman who had done nothing wrong except win too much, too soon, it was a deeply unfair burden — and you could see, in some of those years, how heavily it sat on her.

It is the same trap that has caught other young stars thrust into sudden fame, the same kind of pressure that Naomi Osaka has spoken about so openly — the gap between what the public wants from a prodigy and what the human being can actually carry. Raducanu lived inside that gap for a long time.

The quieter comeback

What is happening now is not a return to the fairy tale, and that is precisely why it is healthier. Raducanu has spent the last couple of seasons rebuilding — not chasing the ghost of 2021, but getting fit, getting settled, finding a calmer relationship with the sport that once threatened to swallow her. She has climbed back to become the British No. 1 again. She has stopped treating every match as a referendum on whether she deserves the trophy she won at 18.

And on the grass this June, she looks like someone enjoying it. The 6-0, 6-3 win over Blinkova at Queen's was not a fairy-tale upset — it was something better, the sign of a player who is simply good again, doing her job in front of a crowd that adores her. After everything — the surgeries, the coaching churn, the years of being told she was a fluke — winning ordinary matches with a smile is its own kind of triumph. Sometimes the bravest comeback is not the dramatic one. It is the quiet, healthy, sustainable one.

Home grass, home crowd, home Slam

The timing could hardly be more poetic. The women's event returned to the Queen's Club in 2025 after roughly half a century away, which means Raducanu now gets to play a grass-court tournament in front of a London home crowd in the build-up to Wimbledon — the tournament that means more to a British player than any other on earth.

Grass suits her, too. Her game has always been about clean, early, flat ball-striking — taking the ball on the rise, redirecting pace, playing with a kind of crisp precision — and the low, fast bounce of grass rewards exactly that. As the whole tour scrambles to adjust from clay to grass, Raducanu is one of the players the surface naturally flatters. And then, in a few weeks, comes Wimbledon and its all-white cathedral — the home Slam, the fortnight when the British public falls in love with tennis all over again, and when the weight on Raducanu's shoulders will be at its heaviest and its warmest all at once.

How she handles that pressure now, compared to the teenager who first carried it, is the real measure of how far she has come.

What she is actually chasing now

It would be easy, and lazy, to frame this as "can Emma Raducanu win another Grand Slam?" That question has followed her since the night she won the first one, and it has caused her more harm than good. The more honest, and more interesting, story is smaller and kinder: a young woman who survived the most sudden fame tennis has ever produced, came through the injuries and the noise and the unfair expectations, and found her way back to playing good tennis and enjoying her life.

If another big title comes, wonderful. But it is not the point anymore, and the healthiest thing about the 2026 version of Raducanu is that she seems to know it. She is chasing health, consistency, and joy — the things that the 18-year-old never got the chance to build before the world decided she owed it a dynasty. Winning at home on the grass, smiling, fit, settled, is not a consolation prize. For everything she has been through, it might be the win that matters most.

What is confirmed, and what is just hope

Confirmed: Emma Raducanu won the 2021 US Open as a qualifier ranked outside the world's top 100, without dropping a set across the qualifying and main draw, beating Leylah Fernandez in the final at age 18 — the first qualifier in history to win a Grand Slam singles title. Confirmed: in the years that followed she struggled with injuries, including surgeries on both wrists and an ankle in 2023, went through multiple coaching changes, and saw her ranking fall, amid intense media scrutiny. Confirmed: she has since rebuilt to become the British No. 1, and in June 2026 won her opening match at the Queen's Club grass event, beating Anna Blinkova 6-0, 6-3, in the build-up to Wimbledon.

Just hope: where the comeback ultimately leads. Whether Raducanu adds more big titles, how deep she goes at Wimbledon, whether the quieter, healthier version of her career produces the sustained run her talent always promised. Nobody knows. But for the first time in a while, the questions around her feel hopeful rather than heavy.

The bottom line

Emma Raducanu's story was never really about a trophy. It was about what happens when a sport falls in love with an 18-year-old overnight, hands her the heaviest expectations in the game, and then watches to see if she can survive them. For a few years, the honest answer looked uncertain. The injuries, the coaching merry-go-round, the cruel "one-slam wonder" whispers — it would have been easy for her story to end as a cautionary tale about fame arriving too soon.

Instead, she is on the grass at Queen's in the British summer, fit and smiling and winning, with the home crowd roaring and Wimbledon on the horizon. She did the impossible at 18, paid a heavy price for it, and found her way back to the simple pleasure of being good at the thing she loves. Whatever happens at Wimbledon, that is a comeback worth celebrating — the quiet kind, the healthy kind, the kind that lasts. Keep an eye on her this grass season. She has already won the hardest match of her career, and it was never on a scoreboard.

Sources

• LBC: When is Wimbledon 2026, as UK No. 1 Emma Raducanu wins at Queen's Club
• LTA: HSBC Championships 2026 results and updates (Queen's Club)
• WTA: 2026 Queen's Club Championships (HSBC Championships) overview
• US Open / USTA: Emma Raducanu's 2021 title run — the first qualifier to win a major
• BBC Sport: Emma Raducanu — injuries, surgeries and coaching changes since 2021
• Wikipedia: Emma Raducanu — career and 2021 US Open

Photo: Emma Raducanu at the 2025 Miami Open / Vbrunophotog / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0