–

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Emma Raducanu’s life changed in an instant in 2021, when she won the US Open as an 18-year-old.

It’s been a … ride since. And as she returns to the Mubadala Citi DC Open for the third time this week, we flash back to the first time, when things were so different.

It’s hard to believe it’s only been three years.

They have been pretty eventful years.

Coming in in decent form

Raducanu, now 22, comes to start the summer hard-court season off a quite good, if not spectacular, grass season.

She lost to No. 1 seed Zheng Qinwen in the quarterfinals of Queen’s Club. Then she dropped a third-set tiebreak to young Maya Joint in Eastbourne (Joint ended up winning the tournament). She defeated former champion Marketa Vondrousova at Wimbledon before losing to Aryna Sabalenka in the third round. Hardly a bad loss.

She’s at No. 45 in the world – sort of where she’s been since Miami in March.

Two a day on Friday

On Friday, in blistering heat that actually wasn’t quite as blistering as Thursday, Raducanu put in a pair of practices.

Here’s No. 1.

And here’s No. 2, on the stadium court.

Flashback to 2022

When Raducanu arrived in D.C. three years ago, she was top 10 in the world.

Her points from winning the US Open in 2021 were still on the resumé, and she was the No. 2 seed for the event, which was a WTA 250 back then.

She had a good early draw, but lost to Liudmila Samsonova in the third round. It was one those weeks where Samsonova was untouchable, and she won the tournament.

What we remember most about that year was that Raducanu just sort of wandered around on her own, almost anonymously, unbothered – at least in the areas that were off-limits to fans. She didn’t have a lot of people with her. And she still didn’t seem to know a lot of people.

As she navigated the site, though, there was plenty of beef.

And she was on a trial run with coach Dmitry Tursunov, whom she obviously didn’t know that well.

It didn’t last that long, and it didn’t end particularly well although Tursunov said he had a high regard for her personally.

–

A rare trip to the doubles court

Raducanu did have a bit of fun – teaming up with Clara Tauson to play doubles.

That’s something extremely rare for Raducanu – even now. This was the first time she’d EVER played doubles at the pro level. She and Tauson lost in the first round to the very experienced pair of Lucia Hradecka and Monica Niculescu, seeded No. 3.

It’s only happened one time since then – last month at Queen’s Club, when she teamed up with fellow Brit Katie Boulter.

Here’s what thst looked like.