Tennis: Emma Raducanu, Andy Murray, Jack Draper through to Indian Wells second round
Emma Raducanu was among the British contingent to book their places in the second round of the Indian Wells Masters on Thursday.
Making her first appearance on the WTA Tour since the Australian Open, Raducanu took just one hour and 21 minutes to see off Montenegro’s Danka Kovinic 6-2 6-3.
The former US Open champion – whose wrist injury had flared up again prior to the tournament – was broken in her first service game by Kovinic, who raced into a 2-0 lead on Court 1.
However, Raducanu responded emphatically, winning the next six games and clinching her second set point, and the second set was a carbon copy of the first for the illness and injury-plagued 20-year-old.
Raducanu, now ranked world number 77, had to fight back from a 2-0 deficit in the second set, which she did with a four-game winning streak, and a love hold and break to love would seal her place in round two.
Raducanu, who will now meet Polish 20th seed Magda Linette, admitted to BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra that she was sleeping only a couple of minutes before she was called to play, having also battled tonsillitis in the past couple of weeks.
“I didn’t feel too good this morning. I’m just so happy with the way I fought and dealt with the circumstances,” Raducanu said. “I just woke up feeling not great to be honest. I felt quite ill so I’m just happy to have played the match and then to win it despite how I felt today.
“Today before the match, I did not warm up. Two minutes before I was called I was sleeping in the treatment room so I’m just proud to have got out there and then won.”
Elsewhere, comeback king Andy Murray came won a deciding set for the seventh time on the 2023 ATP Tour to defeat Argentina’s Tomas Etcheverry, prevailing 6-7[5] 6-1 6-4 in three hours and 12 minutes.
The three-time major winner traded a pair of breaks with Etcheverry in the first set, but failure to take three break points in the ninth game would prove costly as the Argentine edged the tie-breaker.
However, a revitalised Murray was a force to be reckoned with in the next set, embarking on a five-game winning streak to set up a decider, where he broke in the ninth game before converting his second match point.
A second-round meeting with Spain’s Pablo Carreno Busta now awaits Murray, while Jack Draper’s victory against world number 135 Leandro Riedi was much more straightforward.
The 21-year-old fired eight aces en route to a comfortable 6-1 6-1 triumph, and he now faces an all-British tie with Dan Evans in the second round.
Tenth seed Cameron Norrie, who received a bye into the second round, will begin his bid for a second Indian Wells title against Taiwanese qualifier Wu Tung-lin on Friday.
