Believe it or not, it was only this Tuesday that Grand Slam champion Emma Raducanu won her first match on the WTA Tour and it happened in her father’s home country of Romania.
The 18-year-old Raducanu rose to stardom by reaching the fourth round at Wimbledon 2021 and then going all the way to the title at the 2021 US Open. However, the Toronto-born teenager who represents Great Britain has only now won her first ever WTA main-draw match, this week at the Transylvania Open.
In the first round of the WTA 250 tournament in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, Raducanu earned a gritty three-set victory over Slovenia’s Polona Hercog, 4-6 7-5 6-1. The third-seeded Raducanu will face Ana Bogdan of Romania in the second round.
Celebrating the win, the world No.23 Raducanu posted a selfie on social media and thanked the local fans in Romanian, her father Ian’s native language, as he was born in Bucharest. Raducanu’s mother Rennee is Chinese, from Shenyang. The family moved to Bromley, south of London, when Raducanu was two years old.
