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Emma Raducanu claimed her best win of 2026 by some margin as she breezed past world No 18 Sorana Cirstea 6-4, 6-2 at Queen’s Club. It was also her first win over a top-20 player for over a year.

While this statement tells us something about the excellence of Raducanu’s performance, it also hints at the weakness of her results to date. Alarmingly, the previous highest-ranked opponent she had beaten all season was world No 57 Magdalena Frech.

Cirstea, a 36-year-old Romanian playing her final year of a consistent career, has been enjoying contrastingly strong form, and would be a top-10 player based on 2026’s events alone. Already this season, she had thumped Raducanu 6-0, 6-2 on the hard courts of Cluj-Napoca, in a match where Raducanu showed the first symptoms of the viral illness that would dog her for months to come.

But these two had also met on grass at Wimbledon in 2021, in the tournament where Raducanu first came to the attention of the world’s tennis fans. Raducanu’s 6-3, 7-5 win on No 1 Court was a seminal moment in her emergence as a potential star.

The surface makes a considerable difference, because Raducanu’s fleet-footed game is at its most dangerous on the grass. The skiddy bounce gives extra penetration to her groundstrokes, which can be a little lightweight in slower conditions.

In this match, she broke Cirstea at the first time of asking with a series of raking returns, and then defended her own serve determinedly. To only be broken once against such a high-quality opponent was a measure of a much improved performance on that crucial shot.

Because of Thursday’s wash-out, Raducanu will have to come back again to play her quarter-final this evening, which will be a test of her stamina and resilience.

More to come.

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