Emma Raducanu misses rankings chance as she suffers painful Jessica Pegula China Open loss
Emma Raducanu missed the opportunity to continue her rise up the WTA Rankings as she suffered a painful three-set defeat to Jessica Pegula at the 2025 China Open.
The 2021 US Open champion fell 6-3, 6-7(9), 0-6 to world No 7 Pegula in the third round at the WTA 1000 tournament in Beijing.
Raducanu looked close to winning the opening set in dominant fashion when she had a break point to take a 5-1 lead, but — after Pegula broke back — she earned the decisive break to go up 5-3.
The Brit then broke to go up 2-1 in the second set, but Pegula hit straight back. Raducanu had two opportunities to restore her break advantage in the fifth game, but Pegula held firm and the set went to a tiebreak.
In a pulsating tiebreak, Raducanu was unable to convert three match points — on Pegula’s serve at 6-5 and 8-7 and on her own serve at 9-8 — before the American took her second set point.
After a second set that lasted an hour and 15 minutes, Pegula stormed through the deciding set without losing a game in just 27 minutes as Raducanu was unable to recover.
It was a fourth meeting between Pegula and Raducanu, and the 31-year-old American now leads the head-to-head 3-1. Pegula will face world No 28 Marta Kostyuk in the last 16 in Beijing.
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For Raducanu, the match had clear and unwanted similarities to her 6-4, 6-7(10), 1-6 defeat to Barbora Krejcikova in Seoul in her previous tournament.
As she did against Pegula, Raducanu had been up a set and a break against Krejcikova and she had three match points before losing a lengthy second set in a tiebreak. She then lost the decider in one-sided fashion.
Against Pegula, the current world No 32 was chasing her fourth win against an opponent ranked in the top 10.
Raducanu, who was making her debut at the China Open, defeated world No 67 Cristian Bucsa 6-3, 6-3 in her opening match in the second round, having received a bye as the 30th seed.
The 22-year-old has climbed two places from 32nd to 30th in the Live WTA Rankings and would have moved up to 29th had she beaten Pegula. Raducanu could still be overtaken in the live rankings by players still in action in Beijing.
Raducanu, who reached a career-high ranking of world No 10 in July 2022, is currently at her highest ranking position since the points from her US Open title win dropped in September 2022.
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