How Sports Personality of the Year and US Open champion Emma Raducanu began her rise to greatness in Liverpool

British tennis star Emma Raducanu capped an incredible 12 months by scooping the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year accolade on Sunday ahead of Olympic gold medallists Tom Daley and Adam Peaty.

She won the prestigious public vote following a meteoric rise when her incredible US Open victory in September ended a 44-year wait for a British woman to become a Grand Slam singles champion.

But Raducanu started her rise to greatness in the city of Liverpool when, aged just 13, she won her first ever under-18 tournament.

Back in 2015, Raducanu beat a string of older players from all over the world to be crowned champion at the Liverpool Tennis Centre in Wavertree, but she only just qualified for the International Tennis Federation (ITF) junior event.

She turned 13 in November that year, just in time to participate at the lowest entry age in the under-18 tournament and became its youngest ever winner.

“There was a buzz about Emma in 2015 from the people involved,” David Hardman, tennis coordinator for the Liverpool Tennis Centre, told LiverpoolWorld.

“The age Emma won in Liverpool is the age a lot of girls walk away from the sport. She has made tennis a lot more relatable.”

Run by Northern Vision, the junior tournament in Wavertree gives young players the chance to get their first ITF points to start their careers.

Anders Borg, the founder of Northern Vision, told LiverpoolWorld: “We started the junior events to give local players a chance to play against the very best out there.

“Looking back to when Emma was in the event, I saw her practising and she made a real impression. She returned every ball and had an incredible capacity to run around and not make mistakes.

“She competed against older players from other countries and handled it well. I thought she was one for the future.”

Making British tennis history

Five years on from making her mark in Liverpool, teenage sensation Radacanu won the 2021 US Open in September by beating Canada’s Leylah Fernandez, 19, in the final in New York.

The victory made her the first British women’s Grand Slam singles champion since Virginia Wade won the Wimbledon title in 1977.

Winning BBC Sports Personality of the Year

Raducanu capped an incredible 12 months by scooping the prestigious BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year accolade on Sunday.

Raducanu, who is isolating in Abu Dhabi after testing positive for COVID-19 on arrival in the United Arab Emirates last week, told the BBC: “It’s such an honour just to be among these nominees - to win it is pretty amazing.

“I watched Sports Personality of the Year growing up, so I’m really humbled to join the amazing past winners - I’m also really happy for British tennis that we managed to get this award again.

“All the support I’ve received this past year has been absolutely insane, and the energy I felt at Wimbledon this year playing in front of my home crowd is something I’ve never felt before.”

Tyson Fury, Raheem Sterling and Dame Sarah Storey were the other three individuals shortlisted for the award, with Sir Lewis Hamilton, who came so close to winning a record eighth Formula One title earlier this month, omitted.

What Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp said about Emma Raducanu

Reds boss Klopp described Raducanu as the “talent of the century” after he watched the US Open final.

“It is long ago [since] I watched a full tennis game and I was impressed by the power, the speed and the whole game,” the German explained.

“Women’s tennis is obviously in a brilliant moment. These two girls, 18 and 19, what they showed in the game was massively impressive, but then when they got the trophies during the ceremony, both girls how they spoke was really inspiring, to be honest.

“Even more so than the tennis which was inspiring enough. I was absolutely overwhelmed by the way they presented themselves. Fernandez was obviously disappointed and Emma showed great respect for her.

“They knew they will face each other in the future very often and be in many more finals. I wish that for them. It was a great show of sportsmanship and elite sport and how humble you can be, so young on top of the world.

“When you are 18-years-old and win the US Open it can only come from hard work. She is for sure the talent of the century, but without hard work it is not possible to be there and doing that.

“Now she is there and you see her smiling during the game, it is the nicest thing I can imagine. I will watch women’s tennis much more, for sure, than I did in the last few years.”

Raducanu has since thanked the Liverpool boss for his praise and told Sky Sports she was grateful to him for raising the profile of women’s tennis.

The lowdown on the Liverpool tennis tournaments

Norwegian-born Anders Borg, a former London city trader, set up Northern Vision in 2002, a sport event management, academy and marketing company with offices in Liverpool and Oslo.

Northern Vision runs both the ITF junior tournament which started in 2012 and the Liverpool International Tennis Tournament, an international four-day tennis exhibition event played annually as a grass court warm-up event before Wimbledon.

The tournament has been held since 2014 at Aigburth Cricket Ground in Liverpool and was previously played at Calderstones Park.

Since the company started tennis events in the city in 2002, Liverpool has played host to burgeoning talent and big name tennis stars such as Danish former professional tennis player Caroline Wozniacki and Serbian world number one player Novak Djokovic.

Liverpool-born brothers Ken and Neal Skupski have also taken part. Neal won the Wimbledon mixed-doubles finals this year partnering American tennis player Desirae Krawczyk.