Emma Raducanu wins US Open title at 18 l GMA

to the dramatic finals at the u.s open novak djokovic with a stunning loss in the men's final losing to daniel medvedev failing to complete the calendar grand slam on the women's side 18 year old emma radukanu winning a major in only her second attempt she is standing by with us to talk live there she is hello there love that smile but first janae norman joins us with more on all of that good morning janae amy good morning most of the time when i'm standing you're talking about someone they're not right next to me but emma radicanus incredible run to the u.s open final made history even before she won and it was so unexpected she says she booked her flight home two weeks ago a history-making u.s open final 101 to start the tournament goes all the way through without dropping a single set emma radukanu just 18 years old besting 19-year-old layla fernandez the first time two teenagers have met in a final here since 1999 radukanu becoming the first british woman to win a grand slam title in more than 40 years i can't believe this one's next to me the teenage phenom with a chinese mother and romanian father was born in toronto and moved to the uk when she was two years old the furthest she had ever advanced in a grand slam was the fourth round at this year's wimbledon where she retired due to a medical issue before she could even enter the u.s open she had to win three qualifying matches earning the distinction of becoming the first ever qualifier to win the title on the road to victory she defeated tokyo gold medalist belinda bencik and 17th ranked maria sakhari it's the fact it's never been done before by a qualifier that sets up emma's story and then once we look at the actual person who is who is carrying this out you see the tennis skills are immense her fight her grit her desire her savvy all of that after the match radukanu admitted her only regret was that her parents weren't able to be there in person to cheer her on among her legion of newfound admirers none other than the queen of england herself who sent this saying her win is a remarkable achievement at such a young age she may have achieved the kind of greatness that most 18 year olds only dream of but when asked what she planned to do with the 2.5 million dollar prize money ryde kanu issued this classic teenage response i was thinking to myself you know what if you win this match you can buy yourself a pair of airpods she's over there smiling she says before her first round qualifying match she lost her air pods in the changing room and realized if she won she could buy new ones she could buy a whole bunch of airpods yeah that's a fair point janae yes so joining us now is u.s open champ emma radukanu so of course the first question i feel like has to be have you bought the airpods yet and if not when are you gonna do it no not yet i think i'm gonna do it before i leave new york for sure though but um it's it's funny because actually the day before my semi-finals they they found it two and a half weeks later oh my goodness yeah it was like a great omen and a great start to the day and i knew it was going to be a great day plenty of apple stores here in new york so you win your first major three months into the wta tour you get congratulated by the queen how are you going to top this yeah it's absolutely insane to think um it's incredible i was so honored and grateful to have received a note from her majesty i mean it meant everything to me and i'll probably frame that letter and keep it in my room or something you know we were talking about in the piece how you had to drop out of wimbledon because you had these breathing difficulties what did you take away from that experience i took away that it was for me more of a physical issue i think that to win a grand slam you need a lot of mental strength so i think that the resilience part of it um you know sort of speaks for itself that i needed to go through all of that to win islam but physically i've still got a lot of work to do because i'm still very new to the game and i haven't had that time to really develop but having played on tour for the last four or five weeks i think naturally with each match and tournament i've played i've just increased my endurance a little bit what happened emma you clearly are talented um they call you phenom but you're you competed at a level that people been on the tour for a long time have it was there a moment that something clicked that you said oh okay i just figured this out because you didn't drop a set in the entire us open and you had to go through qualifying i think just the sheer amount of matches that i'd played over the last four or five weeks with each one i was building in confidence and i think with each one it gave me more and more of a free swing to go for my shots and be more aggressive and then i was playing some extremely great opponents olympic champion top 20. and when you play those players you definitely need to raise your game and it's it's cool to play up because it's like almost natural selection you know if you don't then you lose so it was really fun to experience and uh yeah i'm just super happy with the week of course so what's been i know the queen is sort of up at the top it's been the most surprising message you've gotten since the way honestly i haven't even checked my messages yet i've just been trying to enjoy the moment and with my team the night of the final we just had a really nice night you know we all spent the night just reflecting and yeah it was a really cool moment because it's been such a long trip for us and everything has gone so fast uh we were taken care of every single day and before you know three weeks had gone but uh yeah we just got to reflect and share a few stories and it was a really nice night to have with everyone i can't even imagine you are we've said this a lot of times one of the youngest major champions ever and the first qualifier to win so what is the message to younger athletes out there i mean i know you're you know probably at this point you're a pretty big inspiration what is the message to those athletes i'd say it's just inner belief because i'm just taking care of each day as best as possible because um ten ten matches ago when i was playing my first round collies i did not think i'd be in the u.s open final or winning it so um yeah if you just do the best you can with every single day time flies and uh you can really achieve anything with inner belief you're only 18 where does his mental toughness come from i think that from a young age i've always sort of been brought up to have mental strength my parents you know they were they played a huge part in my upbringing and uh yeah they were pretty tough on me when i was young but it kind of shaped the way and i think now it's helping on the biggest stages in the world on off the rash stadium when you really need it and it was basically a full capacity so it was very very cool that just sounded funny when you were young but you know you've gone through all this and you haven't had any family here you have you you have your team around you coaches and whatnot but they weren't able to be here what's that what's that going to be like what's the reaction from your parents when you talk to them on the phone right after you won yeah it was really nice to talk to them after i won um i they were just so happy and proud of me and uh that my toughest critics and very very hard to please but uh yeah i got them with this one i can't they couldn't resist we love seeing your smile congratulations for everything thanks for coming thank you so much for having me well hey there gma fans robin roberts here thanks for checking out our youtube channel lots of great stuff here so go on click the subscribe button right over right over here to get more of awesome videos and content from gma every day anytime we thank you for watching and we'll see you in the morning on gma

Channel: Good Morning America

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Keywords: ABC, Emma, Fernandez, GMA, Grand, Leylah, News, Open, Raducanu, Slam, US, Wimbledon, history, p_cmsid=2494279, p_vid=news-79987083, teen, tennis, emma raducanu parents, usopen tennis, who won the us open, interview, good morning america

Id: nhlKjFKFdwQ

Length: 7min 59sec (479 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 13 2021