Emma Raducanu moved to the brink of her biggest title in nearly four years on Saturday, surviving a compressed schedule at the HSBC Championships to reach the first Queen’s Club final of her career and set a Sunday meeting with Donna Vekic.
Double duty. Rain earlier in the week had stacked Raducanu’s commitments, forcing the British No.1 to play twice in a single day on the Andy Murray Arena grass. She came through a delayed quarter-final against Uzbekistan’s Kamilla Rakhimova 6-3, 7-5, weathering a second-set scare that required attention to her left thigh, before returning in the evening to dismantle sixth seed Iva Jovic 6-2, 6-2 in 89 minutes.
A statement win. Jovic, the 18-year-old American who had knocked out 2025 runner-up Amanda Anisimova in the previous round, found no way through Raducanu’s return pressure. The Briton broke early in both sets and tightened her grip in a pivotal fifth game of the second, clawing back from 15-40 to hold for a 4-1 lead that decided the match. Raducanu, who has spent much of the season managing form and fitness setbacks, told broadcasters that “a new Emma” had emerged — her first WTA 500 final, and her first final on home soil.
The other half of the draw. Vekic denied the crowd an all-British final, brushing aside Katie Boulter 6-1, 6-3 in 66 minutes. The 29-year-old Croatian, the Paris 2024 Olympic singles silver medallist and a 2024 Wimbledon semi-finalist, reaches her first tour-level final in two years and arrives as a proven grass-court operator on the low-bouncing London courts. It will be the pair’s first WTA Tour meeting.
What’s at stake. Raducanu is chasing her first WTA title since her fairy-tale 2021 US Open breakthrough; the resurgence lands with timing, three weeks out from Wimbledon. Boulter’s run, meanwhile, had supplied the week’s headline upset — a three-set defeat of world No.2 Elena Rybakina in the last eight — and her semi-final exit leaves Raducanu carrying British hopes into Sunday’s final, live on the BBC and Tennis Channel.
