Emma Raducanu winning the US Open feels like both a recent memory, and like it happened a lifetime ago.
The 2026 US Open begins in New York today and marks five years since the young Brit made that remarkable run to the title at Flushing Meadows.
So much has happened since Raducanu made all different types of history in 2021, though, and the past five years have panned out in a way few would have predicted as she held the trophy aloft - for all the wrong reasons.
Heading into the 2021 US Open, Raducanu wasn’t quite an unknown - she’d just enjoyed an impressive run to the fourth round of Wimbledon just two months previously - but she was certainly not a name who many were predicting to reach the sharp end of the tournament in New York. Indeed, she first of all had to navigate the qualifying rounds.
But having reached the main draw, she just couldn’t stop winning. The draw was kind to the Englishwoman, but when she ultimately beat fellow unseeded player, Leylah Fernandez in the final, it was a genuinely historic moment for tennis. The then 18-year-old became the first qualifier ever to win a grand slam title.
Overnight, Raducanu became a superstar. In flowed huge sponsorship deals with major brands, invites onto the biggest television shows were aplenty and celebrities were falling over themselves to declare themselves fans (Liam Gallacher was a particularly notable fanboy).
Raducanu, said the experts, had the tennis world at her feet. It was pondered as to whether or not, or even how quickly, she would reach double figures of grand slam titles.
Yet five years on, Raducanu’s career could not have diverted more drastically from those predictions.
Not only has Raducanu not added to her grand slam tally - not even close - but the spiral has been so severe that in the lead-up to this year’s US Open, there’s even been rumours of her retiring from tennis entirely.
Hanging up her racquet seems a drastic next move but there’s no question that Raducanu is facing an uphill battle to salvage a tennis career that, at one time, seemed inevitable to become truly great.
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It should firstly be noted that by winning that 2021 US Open, Raducanu joined an exclusive club of major tennis winners, and an even more exclusive club of British major singles winners. Indeed, other than Raducanu, only Andy Murray has won a singles grand slam title in the past 50 years.
And so whatever the Englishwoman accomplished following her US Open win, she had already done enough to be considered a British tennis legend, and nobody can take that away from her.
But despite this, it’s impossible not to be intrigued by her fall from grace over the past five years.
Some of her inability to build upon her grand slam win has been outwith her control, but a significant proportion has been of her own making.
There’s been criticism of Raducanu prioritising her commercial interests over tennis and while I admit being plastered on billboards and appearing in adverts while winning very few tennis matches isn’t a great look, I’m certain this isn’t the primary problem.
Raducanu has, undeniably, suffered more than her fair share of bad luck in terms of injuries.
Having joined the tennis tour full-time the season after her US Open win, she’s suffered injury after injury, undergone surgeries and spent sustained periods unable to train and compete. Part of this is misfortune - no elite athlete is able to maintain full fitness all year round, season after season and so quite how serious injuries end-up being can often be down to luck. But questions also have to be asked about how Raducanu has managed her body over the past five years. Part of being a top-level athlete is being able to stay fit, and that’s something Raducanu has failed spectacularly at.
One has to wonder if her reluctance to invest in her body - she only hired a full-time fitness coach for the first time less than two years ago - has been part of her downfall and while we’ll never know if her injury record would have been less severe had she concentrated more acutely on the physical side of things immediately after that US Open win, there’s few denying that she seemed to take the robustness of her body for granted, and this choice backfired dramatically.
Radicand’s second failing has been her coaching choices. In the immediate aftermath of winning the 2021 US Open, she promptly fired the coach that had helped her achieve that win - Andrew Richardson. It was a decision that almost everyone derided. The following years turned into a masterclass in how not to treat coaches. The Raducanu coaching conyeyor belt was moving astonishingly rapidly, with the Englishwoman hiring and firing coaches with remarkable regularity. There was very much a feeling that Raducanu believed, and perhaps still believes, that she knows better than any coach out there, even though this is demonstrably and blatantly untrue. Yes, certain coaches may not have scaled the heights in terms of results that Raducanu managed with her one grand slam win, but the belief that only coaches who have played at the very highest level have anything to offer is an utter fallacy.
Raducanu’s results over the last five years have been, on the whole, hugely disappointing. Yes, there’s been significant, but very sporadic highlights. But, across the piste, Raducanu has been blighted by poor performances, losses to lower-ranked players and tournament withdrawals from injury. This combination does not make for a successful career in the long-term.
Raducanu, in keeping with how her career has transpired in recent seasons, will not play the 2026 US Open having withdrawn a few weeks ago due to an on-going foot injury. There is no timescale for her return.
Her world ranking is currently 68 which, given the turbulent time she’s had on tour over the past 12 months, is remarkably high.
The question, though, is will she ever scale the heights she did five years ago, or even get close? Since winning in New York in 2021, she’s only reached the second week of a grand slam tournament once, and that was Wimbledon in 2024.
Raducanu’s major challenge is that tennis has moved on significantly since she triumphed at Flushing Meadows five years ago. No longer is she the new kid on the block and there are several players younger than her, notably Mirra Andreeva, Coco Gauff and Linda Noskova, who are all younger and whose levels are considerably and consistently higher than Raducanu’s.
Can Raducanu return to the very top of her sport? Possibly. It’s certainly not impossible, but it will be very, very hard. And in fact, if the Englishwoman can return to the top ten in the world, into which she briefly broke following her grand slam win, it would arguably be a considerably greater achievement that her victory in New York five years ago.
