Emma Raducanu battles pain and injury scare to set up Iga Swiatek clash at Australian Open

Emma Raducanu played through the pain barrier to reach the third round for the first time – and set up a Super Saturday clash with . “I was able to push past some pain today,” she said.

The British No.2 entered the first Grand Slam event of the season without playing a warm-up match after missing three weeks of training following a back spasm before Christmas.

And the former US Open champion needed a medical timeout for treatment on the nagging injury when trailing 0-3 to her friend Amanda Anisimova in the second set.

Raducanu rebounded by winning the next three games – and closed out the match 6-3 7-5 for her best Slam result outside since winning in New York in 2021.

She wrote “Fourth time lucky” on the camera lens in tribute to her milestone victory. “This is a slam that I love playing at so to make it past the second round means a lot to me,” she said.

But in her post-match press conference, the world No.61 revealed she needed to take painkillers to get through the match – and could still feel her back “a little bit” even after the match.

“I felt it pretty much like quite early in the match in the first set, but I was trying not to show anything, of course,” she said.

“Then I asked for some Tylenol or some medication basically, but they don’t give you that without assessing you. The treatment is very difficult because you don’t have much time at all, so it’s hard to really make an impact. You just kind of have to get on with it.

“You then get two changeovers as well for the rest of the match. You have to try and be a bit tactical when you take them because if you go to a third set, you know you need to kind of use it there. So it was hard to kind of think about, but I’m just glad.

“I don’t know how I managed to fight back in the second set and, yeah, take it. I think I’ll probably just take it easy tomorrow. I’ll probably have a light hit. Nothing crazy.

“I’ve played a lot of tennis today and two days ago, so I don’t think I need to overdo it on the practice court. Just to keep the body taking over a little bit and just recover really. I can feel it a bit now, but I mean, I still have some time.”

Asked to analyse her latest injury issue, Raducanu said: “I haven’t fully investigated it yet. I just did my recovery and stuff. Haven’t seen the physios. I think it’s almost to be expected when you haven’t played a match in so long, and then to have two really physical ones, yeah, I think small niggles are going to come up here and there. I’m just hoping that it is that. I was able to push past some pain today, but yeah, I’m going to just try and recover as best as possible over the next day.”

Raducanu sent down a double fault on her very first serve – and made three more in the first game of the second set. But her total of five was down on her 15 in the first round and hussled hard in rallies against the big-hitting American who clubbed 39 rallies.

The two former teenage stars are “good friends” and Raducanu admitted: “It’s incredibly difficult whenever you play a friend, it adds another dimension to the match and not necessarily a pleasant one. I think I did a good job.

“I think I’ve played some friends a few times now. I think today was the best I’ve probably handled it in terms of leaving it off the court. I think as soon as we stepped on the court, we just, yeah, put that aside. We were both trying to beat each other.

“It’s not necessarily the nicest feeling, but I think I know who my friends are in terms of most of them, pretty much all of them are away from the tour, and I think I quite like keeping it that way.

“But I obviously have a few friends on tour who I get on really well with, and it also is nice to be able to relate to someone. We all go through the same things. Yeah, they understand what I would go through, and me the same. I’m happy I stuck with her in the second set and came through and found a way.”