There is a perpetual myth told to (and by) Washingtonians that DC was built on a swamp. Although not strictly true, anyone who has experienced DC in the summer would swear on its accuracy. Temperatures reach 35°C (95°F) with increasing frequency in July and August, only to be intensified by humidity levels upwards of 85%. Unlike larger US cities, there is a languidness to the summers. The café culture lacks the morning rush, with many people still choosing to sit outside and the remainder avoiding the streets altogether. Public tennis and volleyball courts fill at the start of the working day, reluctantly emptying as the sunlight fades. Flea markets and traffic circles pepper the District’s eight wards, persuading the city’s population that Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s lucid dreams did, in fact, materialize. DC is nothing like Paris or New York, nor should it be.
Approximately 35% of The District’s land area is covered by forest. The Rock Creek Park Tennis Center is one such structure insulated by birdsong on one side and car sirens on the other. The Mubadala DC Citi Open faces a similar dichotomy, flagged by a season of European natural surfaces and the biggest hard court swing the tennis calendar has to offer. The DC Open is a tournament of births and rebirths, a vitalization effort for those at the top of the game and a starting point for the second half of the summer. The DC Open remains the only combined WTA and ATP 500 event on the calendar, and this year, the women’s draw found itself enmeshed with the tournament’s distinctive undertones.
Leylah Fernandez and Emma Raducanu, the 2021 US Open finalists, re-established their hard-court expertise. Fernandez won the biggest title of her career, defeating Anna Kalinskaya 6-1 6-2 in a mere 1 hour and 9 minutes. Kalinskaya, for her part, has struggled to maintain a consistency since reaching a career high ranking of 11 last October. On the contrary, Emma Raducanu followed up her form at Wimbledon, reaching her first semifinal since returning from injury in 2024. Raducanu has risen 13 spots after DC and is continuing her run of form in Montreal where she defeated Elena-Gabriela Ruse 6-2 6-4. Since hiring Mark Petchey for the Miami Open, their partnership has won Raducanu two quarterfinals and zero first round losses. Her semifinal run in DC is the culmination of the British number one’s most consistent year on tour so far.
Since becoming a 500 event in 2023, the tournament has become an indicator for success, a so-called feeder event for the remainder of the hard court season. Coco Gauff used her dominance in DC as fuel to win the Cincinnati Open and the US Open and 2024 winner Paula Badosa has reached the quarterfinal and the semifinal in her last two hard court grand slam events. Unlike her predecessors, DC is an outlier result for Leylah Fernandez over the course of this season. The Canadian has not made it past the second round at any tournament this year since February bar a third round appearance in Nottingham earlier in the summer. Kalinskaya finds herself in a similar position going into the Canadian Open, with DC being the first time she has made it past the third round since January. It is unequivocally Raducanu, the semifinalist, who looks primed to take her momentum from DC into the latter stages of this US Open swing.
DC is a tournament that exists at the intersection of transience and stability. It is the first tournament of the US Open swing, the one where everyone is still jet-lagged from European summer and still tired from the seven months that have already passed. It can feel like the beginning of the end for the year, or for some, the beginning of the beginning. Emma Raducanu has had nine coaching changes since her victory in New York four years ago. Journalists and coaches alike have highlighted the instability this brings to Raducanu’s career, a career which has also been wracked by injuries until this season. Although Raducanu is unable to work consistently with Petchey due to his ongoing commitments, her game is evolving. As a twenty-two year old, Raducanu is in an excellent position to continue her development at a steady clip. As Raducanu said herself in DC, the intangibles of tennis, movement and mentality, have improved. The world will never forget her fated 2021 US Open victory. The hope is that now, Raducanu will follow a steady trajectory to the top of the game on her own terms.
