This time, there wasn't much screaming, just some wincing. Every time Emma Raducanu looked carefully at her right hand, the whole country felt her pain.

It's not as easy as putting a bandage on when your job requires you to move quickly and athletically. Raducanu did it with a lot of guts, but in the end, the blister won. So did Danka Kovinic of Montenegro, who is ranked 98th in the world and is playing in the third round of a Grand Slam for the first time.

It is hard to think of how that could have happened if Raducanu had been at his best. But the biggest of the little things really hurt the US Open winner. A hard-to-reach spot on her right hand was raw and open.

Some members of her team thought she should quit before the game. Raducanu was determined to keep going. Since it was her first time at the Australian Open, she wasn't going to give up. But after five games, it was clear she was in trouble.

The sore was on her serving hand, which is called her forehand. So, even though the bandage covering it was small, the blister was big. Huge in the sense that it threw Raducanu off. She got a 3-0 lead in the first set, just like she did against Sloane Stephens in the first round. She then lost two games and called a medical time-out. That's never a good sign so early in a game, and when it was clear what was wrong, fears grew quickly.

Andy Murray has talked about playing with blisters and how most professionals will have to deal with them at some point in their careers. The problem is now both mental and physical. How to put the pain in its proper place. How to keep it from making your game too hard.

Murray is a veteran, though. Raducanu is a teenager. This is her first full tour season. She will never have had to deal with such a minor injury that makes her feel so bad. It's just a blister, right? Try telling that to someone whose job depends on touch, feel, subtlety, and power, but who now can't hold the tool properly.

For this is what happened to Raducanu. She stopped playing her game, stopped holding the racket firmly, and could only play a few shots. She stopped playing powerful forehands and instead used a tricky forehand slice almost all the time. And because Kovinic likes to play long rallies from the baseline, there was a lot of painful going back and forth.

We knew it hurt because Raducanu would look at her right hand between points as if she were trying to think of a way to get through it without grimacing. Still, she stayed out there fighting for 2 hours and 22 minutes.

She won the second set without using a forehand, which was impressive no matter who she was playing, and the third set looked good at first. In her first service game, Kovinic saved one break point, and in her next service game, she saved two. Raducanu may have lost because Kovinic was so tough. She couldn't keep drawing from her physical and mental reserves. Couldn't keep making a mountain out of her injury, which was only a molehill.

As she lost the game, she had a couple of games where she didn't seem to have any spirit. It was a big shame to see. Cynics will find all kinds of bad things in the fact that Raducanu lost in the second round of her first Grand Slam tournament after winning the US Open, but she did a lot more right than wrong.

She was able to change, was brave, and knew how to play the game. In spite of problems, she did her best. And if she has been struggling since that big day in New York, yesterday's loss must be seen in the context of an injured hand and a bout of Covid that kept her out of the tournament for three weeks.

Even Kovinic thought it was strange, and she said so. Raducanu would sometimes hit a hard forehand because she knew she could win the point. She would then go back to taking care of her injury. Kovinic said, "I got confused." "Could she or couldn't she play?"

Later, Raducanu told what happened. She said, "It's just where it is." "It's so deep that it's right in the crease of my palm. I can't get a hold of the racket. Every time I hit the ball, every time I make contact with it, it has an effect. If I hit it slightly off-center and the racket moves a little in my hand, there's even more friction and it rips again. So every shot I make hurts very much.

"I've been having trouble with blisters since I started playing tennis in Australia. After 21 days of not playing, my hands were pretty soft." I started getting blisters on the first day. This one has been with me for about five days, and I have been trying to tape it for every practise. It would harden and dry out, but when I played again, another layer would just come off. It's just in a weird place that makes it hard to tape.

"We have tried so many different things, but they all fall off or make it so I can't feel my racket." I fought so hard to come out and play here, I didn't want to go out like that.'

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