Raducanu loses Queen's final to Vekic but shows 'new
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- Raducanu lost the Queen's final to Croatia's Donna Vekic, failing to save a fifth Championship point and falling short of a first WTA title since her 2021 US Open triumph.
- Raducanu reached the final without dropping a set and defeated two top-20 opponents — Romania's Sorana Cirstea and American teenager Iva Jovic — while also overcoming an injury scare to win twice on Saturday.
- Andrew Richardson, the coach who guided Raducanu to the 2021 US Open, has been reappointed until the end of the season; under his tuition she has won 14 of 17 matches across four tour-level tournaments.
- Raducanu credited the grass surface for suiting her game, saying: "I've been returning well, serving pretty well. It's important on grass," and noted her serve and groundstrokes gain "more punch" from the lower, skiddier bounce.
- Raducanu reframed her reinvention in her own words: "I wouldn't say it's necessarily the old Emma. I think it's the new Emma," pointing to lessons from her post-2021 ups and downs.
- Raducanu is unlikely to play next week's WTA event in Nottingham and instead carries five grass-court matches into Wimbledon, which starts in a fortnight.
- Raducanu's Grand Slam record since 2021 remains thin — only one second-week major appearance (Wimbledon two years ago) — and the article flags that she now must sustain, not just flash, her best level.
Why it matters: Raducanu has repeatedly shown short bursts of form followed by setbacks; the article explicitly warns that her career has followed the same 'injury-disrupted start, shoots of hope, blooming on British grass' pattern. Wimbledon, where she has produced her best Slam results outside New York, is the next test of whether the Richardson reunion and the 'new Emma' identity translate into a sustained run rather than another rinse-and-repeat cycle.
