As Emma Raducanu continues to navigate the tangly pressures of expectation and progress at the Australian Open, she will come face to face with an opponent in Coco Gauff who can relate to her experiences on a level that few can reach. Given their tennis breakthroughs have followed similar trajectories, it is an astonishing boost to the Australian Open that it gets to stage the first ever meeting between Raducanu and Gauff - two of the sport’s most prominent names, let alone teenage stars - on what is only the third day of competition on Wednesday.
They burst onto the scene at Wimbledon at the same stage but two years apart; Gauff with her run to the fourth round as a 15-year-old in 2019, Raducanu to the same point aged 18 in 2021, and then more significantly as she won the US Open as a wildcard two months later. Their worlds changed overnight, and in a way that only a few players on the tour can truly understand. Raducanu and Gauff were held up as future multiple-time grand slam champions, endorsements followed, and the demands to repeat their initial success were not always met with perspective.
