Emma Raducanu ‘looks like a top-20 player and a top-10 challenger’, says leading tennis voice
Emma Raducanu still has a lot of work to do, but her surge up the rankings the past two years “is seriously impressive” with Jonathan Overend saying it is important to separate the current Raducanu from the one that won the 2021 US Open.
Raducanu became an overnight sensation at Flushing Meadows four years ago as she became the first-ever qualifier to win a Grand Slam – winning three matches in qualifying and seven in the main draw without dropping a set – to lift the US Open trophy at the age of 18.
She rose to a career-high No 10 in the WTA Rankings on the back of that title with many predicting bigger and better things were still to come.
However, she struggled to replicate that success in the coming years while injuries also took its toll as she was forced to undergo surgery on both her wrists and one ankle in 2023. As a result, she slipped outside of the top 300 in the rankings.
But Raducanu has slowly, but surely made her way back up as she finished the 2024 season at No 59 and has now broken back into the top 30.
Sky Sports’ leading tennis commentator Overend believes the 22-year-old deserves a lot of credit for bouncing back.
“If you take away everything else around Raducanu – the extraordinary Grand Slam fairytale, the hype, the enormous focus and interest there is. For any player at that age to make that ranking leap is seriously impressive,” he told Sky Sports.
“Outside 300 in the world, double wrist surgery, into the top 30 inside two years before turning 23? Any player, you would say, that’s amazing!
“The fact it’s Emma Raducanu obviously means the conversation is very different because of what she has achieved before that and the expectation that comes with it, which is why I’m always enormously reluctant to compare this Raducanu to the fairytale Raducanu who won the US Open at the age of 18.
“You almost want to disregard the achievement because in telling the story it distorts the reality of the progress that she has made in the last two years.”
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Raducanu currently sits at No 29 in the rankings, but she is unlikely to improve on that for the rest of the year as she has brought a premature end to her 2025 season due to illness and a back injury.
Despite not winning any titles this year, there were a lot of positives for the British No 1.
She beat one top-10 player in Emma Navarro while she also came close to beating the likes of Aryna Sabalenka, Barbora Krejcikova and Jessica Pegula.
“The challenges for Raducanu this year have been pretty obvious,” Overend said. “Getting over the line and beating top-10 players remains a problem, staying fully fit and well, because the back has been an issue and towards the end of the year she had this period of illness which prevented her from competing as she would like in Asia.
“She’ll obviously be disappointed at not being able to win one more point in those tight matches against Krejcikova and Pegula.
“Better players than Emma Raducanu have lost from match point up and it hurts, but it also demonstrates that you are in a position to get wins against top players and she proved that in the summer with those two matches against Aryna Sabalenka at Wimbledon and Cincinnati.
“It’s those two matches which give the most cause for optimism moving towards 2026. She absolutely looked like a top-20 player and a top-10 challenger. She has to believe those days can happen all the time.”
