Emma Raducanu saw her Wimbledon hopes end for another year with a 2-6 7-5 2-6 defeat to Lulu Sun.
The 21-year-old, seeking to reach the quarter-finals of Wimbledon for the first time in her fledgling career, battled injury and the forehand power of her opponent in a thrilling clash on Centre Court.
Sun, making her Wimbledon debut and playing in only her second Grand Slam, proved too much for Raducanu with an impressive show of brute force.
Defeat for 2021 US Open champion Raducanu means British interest in the women’s or men’s singles at Wimbledon this year is officially over.
Raducanu had been the last Brit standing, after defeats to Cameron Norrie and Harriet Dart on Saturday afternoon.
Raducanu had already matched her second-best showing at a Grand Slam, equalling her fourth-round run at Wimbledon in 2021, but she will go no further after this three-sets defeat.
Raducanu faced an uphill battle from the off, being broken to love in the first game and then Sun broke her serve again soon after to take the first set 6-2.
The more precise and ferocious shots invariably came from Sun, who hit more than 50 winners in the match — the most of any player in any match in the women’s singles at SW19 this year.
Raducanu did raise her game in the second set, which followed serve until she broke at the decisive moment to win it 7-5.
The Brit suffered a nasty-looking slip at the beginning of the third set, prompting murmurs of panic around Centre Court as she clutched her lower left leg and required a medical time-out.
Once play resumed, she was immediately broken on serve and despite threatening to break back as the set unravelled, never did.
Sun preserved her crisp and nerveless style of play until the end, taking another game off the Raducanu serve and wrapping up the biggest victory of her career, 6-2.
In doing so, she became only the seventh qualifier to make the women’s quarter-finals at Wimbledon in the Open Era, and the first since Kaia Kanepi of Estonia in 2010.
Raducanu will know Sun’s best tennis was reminiscent of her own during that golden run across the pond three years ago. Another first-time quarter-finalist, Donna Vekic of Croatia, awaits in the last eight.
