Emma Raducanu withdraws from another tournament. When is her next WTA event?
Emma Raducanu’s comeback to WTA Tour action has been delayed as she has withdrawn from her next event, the Upper Austria Ladies Linz.
The 2021 US Open winner has struggled with a viral illness since February’s Transylvania Open and the Linz event will be the second consecutive tournament that she will miss as she also withdrew from the Miami Open.
After reaching her second top-level final in Romania, Raducanu first started showing signs of illness during her encounter against Sorana Cirstea as she noted after the match she had “just been kind of dealing with some health [issues] just not feeling great”.
She returned to action a few days later at the Qatar Open, but then retired early in the third set of her first-round match against Camila Osorio before losing her opening match against Antonia Ruzic at the Dubai Tennis Championships.
Following a two-week break, she was back i action at the Indian Wells Open at the start of March and won her clash against Anastasia Zakharova before losing 6-1, 6-1 against Amanda Anisimova in the round of 32 before withdrawing from the Miami Open.
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She was on the entry list for next week’s Austrian event, where she was due to be seeded, but her team have confirmed that she won’t play as she is not yet 100 per cent healthy.
According to BBC Sport, the world No 28 “wants to focus on making a full recovery before returning to competitive action on the clay”.
Raducanu’s Next Event?
The Stuttgart Open and Open de Rouen are the two clay-court events scheduled for the second week of April, but Raducanu is not on the entry list of either event.
Of course, she could still accept a wildcard entry for the French tournament, but she will most likely only return to action at the Madrid Open, which gets underway on April 27.
As things stand, Raducanu is likely to be one of the top 32 seeds with her ranking No 28, but the fact that she is unlikely to feature at any tournaments before the Spanish WTA 1000 event means she will likely drop a few places in the rankings and could miss out.
If she also opts to skip the Madrid Open, then the Italian Open is the next WTA Tour event on the calendar and she will have a direct entry thanks to her ranking.
There is, of course, also the possibility that Raducanu could decide to give the whole clay-court swing a miss and only make a top-level comeback on grass.
