Emma Raducanu survives 15 double fault outing in Australian Open 1R victory

Emma Raducanu kicked off her 2025 Australian Open journey today. There was some concern about the Brit's participation as she was dealing with some issues leading up to the event. However, that's not something new as Raducanu has faced many injuries in her short career. She eventually ended up playing today with Ekaterina Alexandrova being her opponent.

Set 1

This match was always going to be quite complicated because Alexandrova is a very tough player to play against. She showed that in the opening set, giving Raducanu plenty of problems overall. The Brit had to save break points in the opening game, and while she did it, it was clear that things wouldn’t be easy.

Raducanu did ultimately end up breaking first, taking a 3–1 lead, but she gave it back right away. Raducanu would break again for the 4–2 lead, but once again lost her serve, allowing Alexandrova to make it 4–4.

It was a pretty strange set overall because Raducanu was playing super aggressively. Both were, actually, but Alexandrova was a bit more controlled in her approach. Raducanu was quite erratic, hitting many aces but also committing many double faults.

Double faults generally aren’t common for her, so that was somewhat bizarre. The baseline play kept her alive for a while, but too many double faults proved to be a problem. It allowed the Russian to battle back from 2–4 down to a 5–4 lead, but another double fault, this time by Alexandrova, made it 5–5.

Two more breaks happened, and the opening set went to a tiebreak. Overall, there were eight breaks in 12 games of play. Eventually, Raducanu did win the set, and that was huge for her because she didn’t play the cleanest of sets.

Set 2

Raducanu actually opened the second set with an early break, which is about as ideal as it could get for her. If she wanted to avoid the complications of the opening set, she needed to serve better because nine double faults in the opening set was a pretty poor performance.

Serving was a lot better for Raducanu at the start of the second set, and she held the break for the 2–0 lead. From there, it was a rather simple cruise because she was now feeling really comfortable, and it showed in the way she played.

Alexandrova wasn’t playing badly at all, but Raducanu was fully in control by now. Committing fewer double faults was certainly helpful. They were still there but not enough to ruin the lead Raducanu had. She still faced break points and lost her serve at 4-3 but broke once again for the 5-4 lead.

She didn't close it out again but in the end, Raducanu was able to keep the match in two sets with the final score being 7–6(4) 7–6(2). Not the cleanest match because she had 13 double faults, but overall decent enough to win with 22 winners and 30 unforced errors.