Raducanu arrived in Eastbourne as the British number one, having enjoyed a run to the quarter-finals at Queen’s a fortnight ago.<\/p>\n
But as she prepares for her fourth Wimbledon appearance – where she has twice reached the fourth round – her performance at Eastbourne looked laboured.<\/p>\n
Some impressive serving in the opening set gave her the lead but the wheels seemed to come off in the second, and a commanding performance from Joint levelled the match.<\/p>\n
World number 38 Raducanu pulled out of the Berlin Open last week because of a back issue but, while she seemed uncomfortable at times, she did not call for the trainer at any point against Joint.<\/p>\n
Raducanu held back tears after securing victory on Tuesday and said she was “mentally not really present” at points during the match.<\/p>\n
She slumped in her chair at the change of ends at times on Wednesday, shaking her head in frustration – but she dialled back in to produce a thrilling end to the third set.<\/p>\n
After breaking Raducanu in the first game of the decider, Joint saved break-back points at 3-2 then broke for a second time after Raducanu followed a double fault with a long forehand.<\/p>\n
But Raducanu rediscovered some momentum, twice breaking as Joint served for the match – and she even seemed to surprise herself with a remarkable break to love for 5-5.<\/p>\n
The to-ing and fro-ing continued, both players exchanging breaks before Raducanu denied Joint for a third time as she served for the match and forcing a tie-break.<\/p>\n
But an unfortunate net cord paved the way for Joint, who took the lead and sealed her place in the quarter-finals with an ace.<\/p>\n
Joint, who was ranked 684th in the world at the beginning of 2024, will face world number 69 Anna Blinkova in the last eight.<\/p>\n
She will also make her Grand Slam debut at Wimbledon when it begins on 30 June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Raducanu arrived in Eastbourne as the British number one, having enjoyed a run to the quarter-finals at Queen’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[79,1068,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-213630","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114745045686053130","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}