During the last two years she has worked with a series of coaches in the British tennis aristocracy, including Nigel Sears, the father-in-law of Andy Murray.
Fernandez’s mother has been courtside at all her matches. Her father, Jorge, is also her coach, and he speaks with her every day, sending her game plans for her next match. She has developed largely without the involvement of Canada’s national tennis program.
Now, it’s on to the rarefied ground of the semifinals of a Grand Slam. Fernandez will face Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus, the No. 2 seed. Raducanu will face the winner of Wednesday night’s match between Maria Sakkari of Greece and Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic.
After that, win or lose, the klieg lights that always follow the kind of breakout performances Raducanu and Fernandez have achieved will undoubtedly arrive, an experience that has swallowed plenty of teen phenoms whole as their lives begin to fill with obligations to sponsors and to live up to the expectations that their stirring performances have wrought.
“I just really hope that everyone will protect them,” Bencic said of Fernandez and Raducanu, noting how good for tennis their success could be. “Not try to kind of, not destroy but, put so much pressure and so much hype around them so it just gets too much.”
That is not how it usually goes, but for now, it’s nice to think it might.