A pleasure to be invited to speak with BBC TV on the incredible success of Emma Raducanu! At just 18 years old, she made history, winning the US Open in spectacular fashion. Her journey to the top was a masterclass in mental strength, focus, and determination. From the qualifying rounds to lifting the trophy, she didn’t drop a single set — a phenomenal achievement.
It was the second major tournament of her career, and she holds the Open Era record for the fewest majors played before winning a title.
The Night Emma Raducanu Rewrote the Rules: What Her US Open Win Tells Us About Culture, Mindset, and Performing Under Pressure
Saturday 11 September 2021. Arthur Ashe Stadium, New York. A nineteen-year-old from Bromley, ranked 150th in the world, did something no tennis player in the history of the sport had ever done: won a Grand Slam as a qualifier without dropping a single set.
The morning after Emma Raducanu’s extraordinary US Open victory, BBC TV asked me to come on air and explain the psychology behind what we had all just witnessed. The short answer: everything we saw on that court was built long before the final.
The Conversation That Started It All
The longer answer starts at Bromley Tennis Academy, where coach Clint Harris and his team created something far more valuable than technical excellence. They built a culture.
I spoke to Clint the day before the final. He told me he didn’t need to be a tennis expert to recognise what Emma had. “This girl’s got everything,” he said. But what made Bromley different wasn’t talent identification. It was the environment they built around that talent.
They created a competitive setting where young players felt safe to fail and get things wrong. That phrase — safe to fail — is the one that matters most. It echoes Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety at Harvard: teams and individuals perform best not when failure is eliminated, but when the fear of failure is removed. Bromley understood this instinctively.
What the Psychology Looked Like in Practice
On the psychological side, the work with Emma was specific and deliberate. Three areas stood out from what Clint and others described to me:
Between-point routines. Tennis is a game of micro-recoveries. Every point ends and a new one begins within seconds. The players who manage that transition — who reset emotionally and tactically between points — are the ones who sustain performance across a three-set match. Emma’s composure between points was remarkable. She had clearly rehearsed this.
Dealing with distractions. Arthur Ashe holds 23,771 people. The noise, the cameras, the weight of a nation’s expectation — for a qualifier in her second ever Grand Slam, the potential for distraction was immense. The work at Bromley had prepared her for exactly this: to acknowledge the environment without being consumed by it.
Understanding what the opponent doesn’t like. This is sophisticated psychological preparation. It shifts the player’s focus from anxiety (“What if I lose?”) to curiosity (“What can I exploit?”). It transforms pressure into a tactical puzzle rather than an emotional threat. Sian Beilock’s research at the University of Chicago on choking under pressure supports this: performers who direct attention outward (toward the task) rather than inward (toward their own anxiety) are significantly less likely to underperform.
Staying in the Moment
The quality that defined Emma’s run through the draw was her ability to stay present. Point by point. Not dwelling on the mistake she just made. Not looking ahead to what a victory might mean. Just this ball, this rally, this moment.
This is not a personality trait. It is a trained skill. In sport psychology, we call it present-moment focus, and it draws on principles from mindfulness research and attentional control theory (Eysenck and Calvo, 1992). The athletes I have worked with across football, tennis, boxing, and Olympic sport who perform most consistently under pressure are the ones who have practised this skill until it becomes automatic.
Emma did it at nineteen, on the biggest stage in tennis, with no precedent for what she was attempting. That tells you how well the groundwork was laid.
A Moment on the Scale of the Greats
When the BBC interviewer asked me to put her achievement in context, I compared it to Lewis Hamilton in motor racing, Muhammad Ali in boxing, Ronaldo and Messi in football. That wasn’t hyperbole. No qualifier in the Open Era had ever won a Grand Slam. She didn’t just win it — she won it without dropping a set across ten matches (including three qualifying rounds). The statistical improbability of that run is staggering.
And the impact went far beyond tennis. Messages flooded in from footballers, athletes across every discipline, the Queen, the Prime Minister. She became, overnight, one of the most significant British sporting figures of her generation.
What made the moment even more powerful was what it represented for women’s sport. We have historically looked to men’s sport for the stories that captivate a nation. Emma showed that the excellence, the drama, and the inspiration are there in equal measure on the women’s stage. Pure equality, demonstrated through pure performance.
What Leaders Can Take From This
Emma Raducanu’s story is not just a tennis story. It is a blueprint for what happens when culture, preparation, and mindset converge.
For any organisation seeking to build high-performing teams, three principles from her journey apply directly. First, build an environment where people feel safe to take risks and learn from failure — that is where confidence grows. Second, train the psychological skills (focus, routine, emotional regulation) with the same rigour you train the technical ones — they are not soft skills, they are performance skills. Third, keep your people anchored in the present — the pressure of what might happen is always greater than the pressure of what is actually happening right now.
These are the same principles I bring to every keynote and every team I work with. Whether it is a Premier League dressing room, a corporate leadership team, or a global conference audience, the psychology of performing under pressure is universal.
Roberto Forzoni is a performance psychologist and keynote speaker. He was interviewed live on BBC TV following Emma Raducanu’s US Open victory. Roberto delivers keynotes on teamwork, resilience, and performing under pressure for corporate conferences and leadership events worldwide.
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