What does Emma Raducanu need to break into the top 20 of the WTA Rankings
Emma Raducanu has committed to playing a busy schedule in the final weeks of the WTA Tour season and she has a big rankings goal in her sights as she looks to create a big platform to make progress in 2026.
The 2021 US Open champion has enjoyed a solid year, as she has made steady progress up the tennis rankings, with her stated aim for the next few weeks being a place in the top 32 heading into the new year.
That would secure her a seeded position at the first Grand Slam of 2026, with the Australian Open the next major date in her diary in Melbourne in January.
She is already on course to achieve that goal as she is currently at No 31 in the live WTA Rankings and she may only need a handful of wins to secure even more over the next few weeks.
Raducanu will play in the WTA Tour event in Beijing this week and in Wuhan later this month, with both events offering 1,000 ranking points to the winner.
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While going all the way may not be a realistic target for Raducanu as she looks to build her levels to compete with the top players in the women’s game, achieving a couple of wins in both events would be a more viable goal.
That would fire her comfortably into the top 32 of the rankings and she has also committed to playing in a couple of lower ranking events to round off her year.
Raducanu is making her debut in Ningbo in mid-October before heading to Tokyo, Japan, for the Pan Pacific Open from October 20-26.
She has no ranking points to defend from this period last year, so this is a golden opportunity for Raducanu to head into the Australian Open as one of the seeds and she may even get more than that by the time she lands in Melbourne.
If she were to make progress in the W1000 tournaments and then pick up more ranking points to end 2025, she could be back in the top 20 of the women’s rankings by the time she heads to Melbourne.
Raducanu has yet to reach a WTA Tour final and that could be a target in her final two events of the year, with former British No 1 Tim Henman convinced she has had a positive season.
“She’s a much better player than she was in 2021 because she’s had four more years of experience and now she’s started to build more of a team around her,” Henman told Tennis365 in an exclusive interview.
“I like a lot of what we have seen from Emma this season. For starters, she is playing a lot more than she did other years and that’s important. She’s come up short against some of the top players, but she’s done well in matches against players like Aryna Sabalenka, which confirms she is not far away.
“She’s been competing so much more this year, which therefore emphasises the physical resilience that she’s got because she was always getting injuries.
”So I just hope she can continue in that vein because if she keeps doing the right things on the practice court, the results will come on the match because she’s that good a player.”
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