Emma Raducanu to hang onto British No 1 spot after Harriet Dart crashes out of US Open

Harriet Dart was unable to follow up her brilliant performance against Daria Kasatkina with another win at the US Open and her exit means Emma Raducanu will remain the British No 1 when the WTA Rankings are updated.

The 26-year-old Dart produced the best result of her career as she stunned 10th seed Kasatkina in three sets in the first round at Flushing Meadows with the win also her first over a top-10 player.

With Raducanu falling at the first hurdle during her title defence, it meant the door was open for Dart to leapfrog her fellow Brit in the rankings.

Emma Raducanu’s glass still half full as she starts ‘clean slate’ following US Open exit

However, she came unstuck against Hungarian Dalma Galfi on Wednesday, going down 6-4, 6-0 in under an hour in the morning session in New York.

Galfi, who won the 2015 Wimbledon girls’ title after beating Sofia Kenin in the final, raced into a 4-0 lead before Dart reduced the deficit to 4-2 as she claimed one break back.

But the world No 91 won the final seven games of the match as she bagelled the Brit in the second set.

Dart moved to 715 points after her opening-round win, but was unable to add to that and she is expected to move to a new career-high of No 83 in the rankings, although several changes could still take place.

She reached the quarter-finals in Eastbourne and Nottingham during the grass-court season while she took out former world No 3 Elina Svitolina during a run to the last 16 of the WTA 1000 Indian Wells Open.

Dart played four tournaments – three lower-level events and one WTA event – after last year’s US Open so she does have a handful of points to defend, winning the ITF USA 28A tournament in October.

Raducanu, meanwhile, started her US Open title defence as the world No 11, but she will drop to a projected 80 as 2,030 points will come off her tally of 2,756, leaving her on 726 points when the rankings are updated after the final Grand Slam of the season.

The 19-year-old, whose next appearance on the Tour is expected to be at the Korea Open from September 19, won only a handful of matches in the final few months of the 2021 season and it looks set to be a toss-up between the two to finish the 2022 season as the British No 1.