MELBOURNE, Australia — In 2020, Iga Swiatek won her first Grand Slam title at the age of 19.
The following year, Emma Raducanu won her first Grand Slam title at the age of 18.
The pair of major teenage winners have followed divergent paths since then. Swiatek has added another four Grand Slam titles to her list, holding the title of world number 1 for more than 100 weeks; Raducanu has not reached the final of any WTA Tour event, let alone another major.
Their Australian Open third-round match on Saturday is one of the most important of Raducanu’s career since she won the 2021 US Open. She has gone deeper in a Grand Slam before, reaching the fourth round of Wimbledon last year, but she has never played a match. opponent scored higher than world number 7 at a major.
Raducanu’s career record against top-10 players is 2-7, with an 0-3 head-to-head against Swiatek, but she has won her last two matches against top-10 opponents at Eastbourne and Wimbledon respectively. After a heavily disrupted 2024, 2025 will immediately bring a test against one of the best players in the world.
Swiatek and Raducanu, now 23 and 22 respectively, followed very different paths on the way to their first Grand Slam titles. Swiatek’s breakout tournament at the 2020 French Open came courtesy of numerous Grand Slam main draw wins and a junior Wimbledon title, while Raducanu won the 2021 US Open as a qualifier, a tennis moment unlike any other in history.
Raducanu laughed on Thursday as he spoke of breakthroughs after beating girlfriend Amanda Anisimova 6-3, 7-5 to set up the meeting with the world number 2.
“I know she played from a very young age and my hours were probably a bit comical in comparison when I was 17 or 18 and playing six hours a week,” she said at a press conference.
“I don’t think it was the same trajectory.”
In that junior Wimbledon title run, Swiatek met Raducanu in the quarterfinals. She won 6-0, 6-1.
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The contrast has persisted since their respective first major titles, with Swiatek winning Grand Slams on multiple surfaces (clay and hard courts), while Raducanu was either flattered to deceive in the wake of sudden and infinitely increased expectations, or continued bad luck had injuries. Her career has been one of consistent rebuilding, as Swiatek has won at least one major in each of the past three seasons, won 22 singles titles and the title of ‘most valuable player’ of the 2024 United Cup after winning of all her singles matches.
In 2022, when Swiatek won both the French Open and the US Open, Raducanu had her first real season on the WTA Tour – as Grand Slam champion. Her results were good when presented as a novice player trying to get through a full season for the first time, with one semi-final and a pair of quarter-finals. They were less good by the normal standards of a Grand Slam champion. Raducanu finished the year at No. 75 after losing 2,030 points following a first-round exit at the US Open, plummeting from No. 11 to No. 83 in two weeks.
It was a year of frequent coaching changes for Raducanu. After winning the US Open with Andrew Richardson, she replaced him with Torben Beltz just two months after winning the title. By April 2022, Beltz was out and Dimitry Tursunov, who had worked with Annett Kontaveit when she reached No. 2 in the world, was in.
Tursunov did not last longer than a trial period of a few months, which is telling Tennis majors that there were “red flags” he could not ignore. Sebastian Sachs arrived in December 2022 and lasted until the following June, making it five coaches in less than two years for Raducanu. Richardson had replaced Nigel Sears in July 2021, just two months before her US Open victory.
“Anything that doesn’t necessarily serve me, I’m just pretty wild when it comes to prioritizing myself and focusing,” Raducanu said in Melbourne on Thursday. “I don’t have time for anything that wants to influence that. No hate. I just don’t want to let that in.”
Coaches are asked to put together PowerPoint presentations to explain their thinking – she has always had an incredible focus and demand for excellence. Even as a junior, she sought out coaches who could help her with specific shots. She is obsessed with the why of things and will not just jump because she is told to.
She said on BBC Radio 4’s Today program in October 2023: “I ask my coaches a lot of questions. On certain occasions they couldn’t keep up with the questions I was asking and maybe that’s why it ended.”
Beltz was brought in to improve her forehand and when that didn’t happen, Raducanu saw little point in continuing.
Emma Raducanu with Dimitry Tursunov at the 2022 US Open (Julian Finney / Getty Images)
A big moment in Raducanu’s next rebuild came in late 2023 when she hired Nick Cavaday as coach. The pair worked together when Raducanu was a junior and had discussed a potential partnership earlier in her senior career, with the timing not working out on either side. He joined her team toward the end of a 2023 season dominated by another recurring theme of her career: injuries.
She missed most of the season after double wrist surgery and ankle surgery, which together meant she played only five events and ended her season in April. While Raducanu was in the early stages of his rehabilitation, Swiatek claimed a third French Open, her second in two years, and a fourth Grand Slam title overall.
Cavaday is still active thirteen months later, an eternity compared to how long her previous coaches lasted. Raducanu responds to his clarity of thought and communication style, with an emphasis on offering evidence and data to support what he says. Cavaday’s technical expertise also allows them to work on specific shots – especially the forehand and serve – which was a key factor in Raducanu’s previous coaching decisions.
At this year’s Australian Open, the forehand was powerful, but the latter is still a work in progress. Raducanu meets her opponent on Saturday with the more established team, while Swiatek starts life with Wim Fissette. Fissette has coached former world No. 1 players Naomi Osaka, Kim Clijsters and Angelique Kerber to win a total of six Grand Slam titles, and looks to return Swiatek to the devastating but controlled aggression that saw her dominate the sport. Her string of too-similar defeats under former coach Tomasz Wiktorowski, in which she descended into a downward spiral of skipping groundstrokes against peaking opponents, still seems a long way off.
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Swiatek is yet to suffer a defeat against Raducanu; Raducanu still has to win a set against her. They crossed paths for a third time in 2024 after the Briton moved her ranking from No. 285 at the start of the season to No. 58 at the end of the season. She met Swiatek in the quarterfinals of the WTA 500 Stuttgart, which Swiatek won 7-6(2), 6-3.
Raducanu entered the tournament as a wildcard because she is a brand ambassador for Porsche, which also sponsors the event. Later that year, Raducanu posted a photo of herself driving her £100,000 Porsche Cayenne after rumors spread that the company had repossessed a car they had gifted to her when she was spotted on a public bus in London. In December, Raducanu told a small group of reporters that she would cut back on sponsorship days.
Last year also took that point to the fourth round of Wimbledon, but it was overshadowed by her decision to withdraw from her mixed doubles match with the retiring Andy Murray to protect her wrist ahead of her fourth-round match.
Raducanu felt like she had no choice. Murray was gutted. His mother, Judy, called it “amazing” on social media. Raducanu was widely criticized for doing what most players in the same situation would have done before saying tennis “doesn’t feel different at all” when asked about Murray’s absence from the US Open. She added that the way tennis works means that even someone like Murray moving on is “old news the next day.”
Even without that episode, Raducanu has faced challenges in connecting with the broader sports audience. In Melbourne she spoke about the Murray situation in a less matter-of-fact manner than before.
“Then I sent him a long message, basically, ‘If I’ve caused any trouble at Wimbledon, I think, that’s the absolute last thing I want,'” she told a small group of reporters.
“He is someone I grew up watching and I don’t want any bad blood or hard feelings with him.”
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Aware of the importance of an athlete’s public image, Raducanu met with a group of British journalists in December for an interview and informal lunch during which she explained some of her goals for 2025. After hiring fitness trainer Yutaka Nakamura, who has worked with Grand Slam champions and world No. 1 Maria Sharapova and Naomi Osaka Raducanu said: “I think I can become one of the best athletes in tennis. I think he will really help with that.”
At the time, Raducanu had only just returned from a few months’ absence after spraining his foot ligaments in early September. She had also had a difficult period before that, choosing not to qualify for the hard court swing before the US Open and then arriving at the US Open undercooked.
During her pre-tournament press conference, Raducanu talked about how good she felt, but after losing to Sofia Kenin, Raducanu cried during her post-match duties. “I feel down, I feel sad,” she said.
Raducanu arrived in Melbourne under similar circumstances after a back spasm occurred while tying her shoelaces, leaving her arriving at the Australian Open without match training.
Both of her wins so far, against No. 26 seed Ekaterina Alexandrova and former French Open semifinalist Amanda Anisimova, were sloppy but held on when necessary. She has won her last eight tiebreaks, including two against Alexandrova. Her adjusted serve was shaky, but she relied on her ground game and worked on physical issues to protect the issues with her serve. Raducanu received treatment on her back when she was 0-3 down against Anisimova in the second set, before winning seven of the next nine games to win the match.
Emma Raducanu was impressive in her first two matches in Melbourne. (Shi Tang/Getty Images)
Her defensive tennis was excellent against Anisimova, rushing the baseline only to draw fouls by forcing another shot out of an increasingly erratic opponent.
“I was able to reach some balls that I might not have been able to before,” Raducanu said afterwards.
When asked about their divergent paths over the past few years, Swiatek responded philosophically. “Everyone has a different story and everyone is struggling with different things,” she said at a news conference Thursday.
The expectation is that Swiatek will be too strong, but being in a position to compete against the best players in the world feels like an important step for Raducanu.
“When we’re on the field, whoever starts playing better will win, and that’s it,” Swiatek said.
(Top photo: Robert Prange/Getty Images)