Emma Raducanu suffers big rankings drop after withdrawing from another tournament
Emma Raducanu has suffered another rankings blow after pulling out of the China Open due to a stress fracture in her right leg. The one-time US Open winner has not played a competitive match since reaching the Queen’s Club final in June. The injury forced her to skip Wimbledon and miss out on a return to Flushing Meadows, the scene of her historic Grand Slam triumph in 2021.
Raducanu was initially named on the entry list for the China Open, offering hope that she would make her long-awaited comeback in Beijing. However, she quietly dropped off the list several weeks before the tournament, with her injury seemingly refusing to go away. Her inactivity has taken its toll on her position in the WTA rankings, with the 23-year-old dropping like a stone.
She is now ranked 100th by the WTA, a significant drop from her previous position of 31st the day after losing to Donna Vekic in the Queen’s Club final.
It leaves Raducanu at serious risk of dropping outside the top 100 unless she makes a speedy return to the court. If she fails to play again before the end of the year, she will almost certainly fall even further.
Players ranked outside of the top 104 are not guaranteed entry into Grand Slam tournaments and Raducanu would not qualify for many WTA events without a wildcard invitation.
She has received plenty of wildcards in recent years, but those invitations could soon dry up given her prolonged lack of success and repeated injury problems.
Raducanu remains a star in tennis as a result of her US Open triumph five years ago, but the sport is moving on and newer players are coming through and achieving success in her absence.
Andy Roddick recently spoke about Raducanu’s struggles, saying on his podcast: “We might not even see her for the rest of this year. It just stinks because she is so good and it’s just the stop and start of things.
“You can’t get around a stress fracture, that’s not a pain tolerance thing at all. It has to heal or you are going to cause extreme long-term damage. It just stinks.
“She could be such a bright spot for the tours and it just seems like there are speed bumps all the time, which is just unfortunate.
It sucks. I hope she gets better. She was playing great at Queen’s too, like she was going to blow the roof off of Wimbledon. She is so good and so injured all the time.
“It’s got to be kind of depressing for her, too. I keep thinking we are going to get six months where we are going to be able to go and play and do all the things and we are just not able to get it, which is unfortunate.”
