No. 8 seed Emma Raducanu withstood a stern test from Jaqueline Cristian to advance to the second round of the Korea Open 2025 presented by Motiva 6-3, 6-4 in 2 hours and 2 minutes. The Briton, who took a last-minute wild card into the tournament, came from 3-1 down to win both sets.
Seoul: Scores | Draws | Order of play
The first-round contest between the pair had originally been scheduled for Tuesday, but postponed to Wednesday due to rain. Raducanu will next face a fellow major champion, Barbora Krejcikova, in another first-time encounter as she bids to return to the quarterfinals for a second straight year.
“It hasn’t been easy — I feel like I’ve played this match for the last three days,” Raducanu said in her on-court interview. “So to have pulled through after waiting, I’m super pleased with how I came through. Tough conditions, very slow — long rallies, long points. So happy to have gotten through.”
Match management key for Raducanu: The 2021 US Open champion was up against it in the early stages of the match. Cristian came out of the blocks with her forehand on song, and had racked up seven winners to zero for Raducanu by the first changeover. Throughout the match, the Romanian was more spectacular off the ground, firing 25 winners overall to Raducanu’s 15.
But the statistic from the opening few games that was to set the tone was Cristian’s lack of efficiency on big points versus Raducanu’s ability to lock in when she needed. Raducanu saved the first seven break points against her before Cristian converted her eighth. Moreover, Cristian was unable to to translate her glut of winners into any real momentum thanks to 38 unforced errors outweighing them over the course of the match.
All but one game of the first set went to at least one deuce, and as Raducanu gradually reeled Cristian in that one straightforward game proved crucial: a break of Cristian’s serve to go 5-3 up, courtesy of two double faults and two sprayed forehand errors.
The second set played out in a similar fashion. Cristian broke early again, this time courtesy of a pair of Raducanu double faults. But from 2-0 down, Raducanu found her best tennis of the day. Her forehand had been erratic for much of the first set, but in the second it clicked with a series of superb winners from that wing. At 4-4, Cristian threw in another game full of cheap mistakes, and Raducanu closed out victory after saving one break point in the final game with another forehand winner.
Haddad Maia, Shnaider, Tauson also advance: Defending champion Beatriz Haddad Maia and No. 5 seed Diana Shnaider joined Raducanu in the second round on Wednesday. Shnaider had split sets with qualifier Caty McNally when play was halted the previous day, but took control of the decider to advance 2-6, 6-2, 6-4, despite needing five match points to seal victory.
No. 6 seed Haddad Maia also had to battle to close out her match against Korean wild card Back Dayeon, who made a late charge from 5-0 down in the second set to 5-3 before Haddad Maia sealed a 6-4, 6-3 win on her third match point.
Two second-round matches were also completed. Maya Joint defeated No. 7 seed Sofia Kenin for the second time in 2025 to reach her second WTA 500 quarterfinal of the season, needing just 63 minutes to race past the American 6-3, 6-1. No. 3 seed Clara Tauson defeated Eva Lys 6-2, 7-6(4) to make her seventh quarterfinal of 2025, holding off a late charge by the German after serving for the match at 5-4 in the second set.