{"id":13450,"date":"2026-01-18T13:18:04","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T13:18:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=13450"},"modified":"2026-01-18T13:18:04","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T13:18:04","slug":"australian-open-2026-emma-raducanu-overcomes-slow-start-to-sail-into-second-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=13450","title":{"rendered":"Australian Open 2026: Emma Raducanu overcomes slow start to sail into second round"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Raducanu made encouraging progress in 2025, climbing back into the world&#8217;s top 30 and playing more matches than in any previous season of her career.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, the off-season technical work she planned to put in with coach Francisco Roig &#8211; who helped Rafael Nadal win 16 of his 22 major titles &#8211; was hampered by a foot injury.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She arrived in Melbourne with just one win under her belt and, in her last game before the first major of the year, she fell to a chastening defeat by world number 204 Taylah Preston in Hobart.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It briefly looked like another upset could be on the cards for Raducanu as Sawangkaew &#8211; making her Grand Slam main draw debut &#8211; sparked to life in the opening few games, overwhelming Raducanu with aggressive returns and clever net play.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She broke the Briton in the third game and had a chance for a 4-1 lead, but Raducanu replied with a handful of brilliant winners to avoid falling further behind.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Raducanu&#8217;s momentum gathered from there and she struck back to level the set at 4-4 before breaking again to take the opener.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She continued to overpower the Thai player, hitting 17 winners to Sawangkaew&#8217;s nine and winning 27 of the 40 points on offer in the second set &#8211; and she sealed victory in style with an ace.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;She&#8217;s playing some incredible tennis and way higher than her ranking currently, so I think she&#8217;s going to do good things this year,&#8221; Raducanu added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>#Australian #Open #Emma #Raducanu #overcomes #slow #start #sail<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Raducanu made encouraging prog&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13451,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[242],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13450"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}