Emma Raducanu admitted she has to improve her new serve after getting a “brutal” Grand Slam lesson from Iga Swiatek.
The Polish superstar won the last 11 games as she raced to a 6-0 6-1 third-round victory in only 70 minutes at the Australian Open.
It is the worst Grand Slam defeat of the British No.2’s career – and equals her biggest loss to Elena Rybakina in Sydney three years ago.
Former British No.1 Laura Robson said: “It was brutal. Raducanu will be walking off court today not knowing what really happened.”
And fellow TV commentator Sam Smith added: “There was only one woman in it.”
The 2021 US Open winner was playing her first tournament of the year – and facing a top 10 star at a Major for the first time.
She got away with 20 double faults in her first two wins over No.26 seed Ekaterina Alexandrov and world No.35 Amanda Anisimova.
But world No.2 Swiatek is a different class and Raducanu, who has remodelled her service action in the off season, only held serve once and was broken five times.
Only Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk has sent down more than her 24 aces in the tournament so far. “Today the scoreline was obviously quite harsh,” said world No.61 Raducanu.
“Credit to Iga, she played good tennis, but I think it was a little bit of her playing well and me not playing so well. That combination is probably not good and resulted in today.
“Of course, if a top player is playing perfect, it’s going to be a difficult match already. And yeah, I just want to work on certain things and make them better and more consistent. I feel like I look back and know exactly what I need to do, and I take it as feedback.
“I think the thing I want to improve is serving. The first two matches I got away with it against two top players because I was able to defend and move, use the rest of my game. But I think that needs to improve.
“I’m very clear on what happened out there. The scoreline reflects one thing. If I’m not necessarily able to hold my service games or kind of dictate, I feel like it seeps into the rest of my game.
“On my second serves, how the point is structured from then on, and also in the return games, you feel a lot more pressure. I think that was probably a big aspect of today. Probably the first two matches, as well.”
Raducanu, who plans to play next in Singapore, had her pre-season training disrupted by a back spasm and had to pull out of her only warm-up event in Auckland.
“Three weeks ago when I was in Auckland, at the end of last year, I was doing pool rehab,” she said.
“I think to be on a tennis court playing matches and competing is something I have to be grateful for. I started hitting when I came here 18 days ago. I have to take a positive that I was able to beat two top opponents in the first two rounds.
But I think today, no excuses for the back or physically. I didn’t play well. She played very well. I think, given the preparation we had, we have to be grateful to be in this position.
“I think one of my goals for this year is to just to be consistent, ride with it. I think today is going to be a really good test in a sense, but also I’m going to look back and be like I learnt a lot from it and got a lot of feedback of what I need to do better.”
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