Outclassed and outplayed, Emma Raducanu bowed out of the 2025 US Open on Friday (29 August), after a difficult third round outing against Kazakhstan’s Elena Rybakina.
The 22-year-old British tennis star found herself on the back foot early, and never seemed to settle into the match between Grand Slam champions. In fact, she could only watch as the scoreline bent more and more in Rybakina’s favour, ultimately leading to 6-1, 6-2 straight sets defeat at Louis Armstrong Stadium.
“I thought she did everything better today,” Raducanu said of Rybakina after the match. “She didn’t let me settle in every department. It was hard to really capitalize on the few moments that I had. Every ball was so difficult that I was receiving.”
Faltering at both the service line and the net, the 2021 US Open women’s singles champion looked like a husk of her former self on court, but that didn’t stop the crowd from throwing their support behind the beleaguered world No. 36.
And while there were bound to be a few highlights from Raducanu’s side of the net, those moments proved fleeting and hard to string together for the 22-year-old Brit, who failed to show the same level of dominance she displayed in her first two matches at Flushing Meadows this year.
Still, choosing to view the loss from an angle of growth, rather than bitter defeat, Raducanu highlighted the mental fortitude required to succeed at the top level of tennis.
“I’ve just got…to keep working to try and close the gap,” she asserted. “A match like that can easily kind of get you down if you let it. So I’m going to try not do that, and regroup, work hard, and get ready for Asia.“
While Raducanu will be left to examine what went wrong on Friday, Rybakina will advance to the fourth of the 2025 US Open, where she’ll face Czechia’s Markéta Vondroušová.
The match-up promises to be nothing short of intriguing, with the unseeded Czech player still flying high from her stunning upset over Italy’s seventh seeded Jasmine Paolini on Friday (29 August).