Emma Raducanu begins beautiful friendship in defeat at Wimbledon

Farewell to all that then. In the end Emma Raducanu’s first superstar Wimbledon, her first as a champion – or increasingly, in front of a fond, rapt Centre Court as Em! – could only stretch to three days and two matches.

On a chilly June afternoon the British No 1 was beaten in straight sets by Caroline Garcia of France. And there will be sadness at such a meek exit. For Raducanu because she was simply blown away by a more powerful opponent, a moment of cold, hard sporting reality for a teenager who is still just a year into her own elevation from schoolgirl to sporting A-lister and all-round pop celebrity. And also for the All England club, the BBC and the entire Wimbledon industrial complex, which has a hunger for Raducanu now, which feasts on its stars, building its sporting-hospitality monoliths around them every summer.

Expectations for Raducanu will always be warped by her precocious success at the US Open last year, an unrepeatable miracle of will, of taking the moment. Defeat here will no doubt be seized on by critics, middle aged men on the internet, and all those who wish to scoff, to wag a finger at the commercial deals that have followed (Raducanu is the face of Porsche, Evian, Tiffany and Dior; she could, frankly, be the face of a whole lot more things).

But Wimbledon embraced Raducanu warmly in her first appearances on Centre Court. It is the key relationship in this place, the one between crowd and favoured player,. It took several summers for Centre Court to embrace the angular, youthful Andy Murray – and Murray is basically the boss of this place now, Wimbledon’s dad, so ingrained you can imagine him going around late at night turning the lights off, frowning up at the gutters as he puts the cat out.

An