It’s a little after 8pm by the time the first ball is tossed. Karen Khachanov has just beaten Nuno Borges on No 3 Court and so even before it has started Emma Raducanu v Aryna Sabalenka is the last game on anywhere at Wimbledon: a standalone attraction, the roof not so much closed as hermetically sealed. We are locked in, under these hot lights, until nightfall.
And of course this is not simply a third-round game. At the behest of the broadcasters this is also a primetime television product, an item of light entertainment. Raducanu isn’t just battling the world No 1 here, she’s up against Gardeners’ World on BBC Two. The hill is packed. Brian Cox and Mary Berry in the Royal Box are transfixed. And to think Roland Garros would probably have put this match on in mid-morning.
But something about Raducanu in primetime still feels a touch incongruous, and not only because of her world ranking of 45. For this is not instinctively a player you associate with edge-of-the-seat drama or vintage comebacks. Usually Raducanu wins in a hurry and loses in a hurry. She has never won a third set at Wimbledon. So in a way, for all she has achieved, this is a player still awaiting her big homecoming, her Centre Court splash.
None of which, of course, has stopped people from trying to confect drama around her. Sonay Kartal’s progress to the fourth round has been met with a deluge of Raducanu-themed headlines. “Kartal steps out of Raducanu’s shadow”, “Raducanu’s old rival”, “overtakes Raducanu in the rankings”, and so on. Cameron Norrie has just been asked in his press conference whether he is dating Raducanu. One stalker has already been banned from the grounds, but others, it seems, are still walking around with lanyards around their necks.
On Wednesday after beating Marketa Vondrousova she described a moment when her fug of concentration lifted for a second and the scale of it all suddenly hit her all at once – the crowd, the court, the occasion, what it all would mean – and briefly forgot how she was going to hit the ball. What must it feel like to live in this glare, to sense that tremendous rumbling noise every time you walk to practice or log on to the internet, to stay sane and competent in a world where the walls are constantly trying to collapse in on you?
Perhaps Raducanu’s real achievement has been simply to function, to build herself a palace of the mind strong enough to allow her not just to work but to thrive. To know that you’re the last game of the day, and know why, and yet still to put in your greatest ever Wimbledon performance and your best against a top-10 player. To face down everything else out there and still have the strength to face down the most ferocious hitter in the game.
And though it was a straight-sets defeat, there was enough here to show the rest of us what she had always believed herself. She saves seven set points in a remarkable 10th game as Sabalenka tries to pummel her to bits. She breaks, is broken courtesy of a slip and a lethal net cord, loses a heartbreakingly tight breaker. She’s elusive, courageous, clever. It’s past 9pm and Raducanu is now competing with Celebrity Gogglebox and Not Going Out, which has been moved to BBC Two.
But of course Sabalenka, too, has added levels to her game. She serves more consistently, gets more revs on her ground strokes, drops more, comes to the net more, thinks her way through matches better. Above all she possesses what has always been Raducanu’s superpower: the ability to intuit the momentum shift before it happens, to find the point of weakness that can upend the match entirely. Facing points for a 5-1 double break, she finds big first serves, finds the corners, wins five games in a row for the match.
Occasionally very smart and very brave people on the internet like to argue that Raducanu is basically some manufactured confidence trick, that it’s somehow possible to win a US Open by dumb fluke. But then along come matches such as this to remind us: actually, no. Emma Raducanu gets a lot of hype because Emma Raducanu is capable of playing a frighteningly high level of tennis. The only question worth asking is how she can unlock it more frequently.
It’s beyond 10pm. The news has been pushed back and Raducanu is now competing with First Dates on Channel 4. She should be pleased, she should be proud, but as she departs she looks crestfallen. And of course it should hurt to come this close, to get so many opportunities and ultimately to fall short. But when the dust settles she will know that she truly belongs in this company: a primetime performer for a primetime slot.
