Emma Raducanu has seen her China Open run grind to a halt after she was beaten by Jessica Pegula.
The Great British star raced out of the blocks to take the first set, but after losing a monster tie-breaker in the second set, she was thumped 6-0 in the decider.
Pegula admitted she got lucky against Raducanu, but that is massively doing herself a disservice, with the world number seven playing some brilliant tennis after dropping the first set.
Before the match, fans expressed concern about Pegula, but they needn’t have worried, as the player showcased how she managed to reach the semifinal of the US Open earlier this month with a strong performance.
Annabel Croft spots worrying Emma Raducanu trend
This isn’t the first time that Raducanu has fluffed a number of match points to eventually lose in recent weeks, and things need ironing out for certain.
At the Korea Open, she had match points during a second-set tie-breaker against Barbora Krejcikova but eventually went on to lose the match.
Now, lightning has struck twice, with Raducanu crashing out of the tournament despite playing good tennis and putting herself in a position to win.
Now, Croft has spotted a real issue that needs to be ironed out by Raducanu if she’s to progress and start making the latter stages of tournaments once more.
She said on Sky Sports Tennis: “You have to sit and talk about it because you don’t want patterns emerging like this and then players talking about it and sussing it out in the locker room.
“Players do tend to have patterns that emerge, she’s not unique in that sense. I just think it’s unusual to have two matches like she’s had and to have three match points and not convert is very unfortunate.
“It’s such a shame because she’s played so well, but she’s let it get away from her far too quickly and worryingly it’s another loss against a top 10 player.”
What Emma Raducanu did that Annabel Croft likes to see in tennis
Although Raducanu is once again out of another tournament in the early stages, she did win some praise from Croft for something she didn’t do after losing the second-set tie-breaker.
Instead of heading off the court as most players do, Raducanu stayed in her chair and was keen to get on with the match.
Clearly, that decision backfired a little bit but nonetheless, Croft believes these long breaks at the end of sets that are often taken by players should become more infrequent.
She continued: “I didn’t think about it, but now you’ve said it, I am a bit surprised, but I’m glad she didn’t. I think that’s something that has to stop as much as possible in tennis. It just takes all of the momentum out of it. I don’t really like it.”
The powers that be perhaps do need to take a look at those sort of breaks and clearly if they were amended, Croft would be extremely on board with it.
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