Where will Emma Raducanu be ranked after her heroics at Wimbledon?
Emma Raducanu is set to explode back into the top 100 of the WTA Rankings after her thrilling run form at Wimbledon, but she missed a glorious chance to fire her ranking even higher after a last-16 defeat against Lulu Sun.
Raducanu started June well outside the top 200 in the rankings, with the wrist and ankle surgery she underwent mid-way through 2023.
Her absence from tennis in the second half of last year ensures she has no ranking points to defend for the rest of this year and that has sparked her sparkling rise up the WTA Rankings in the last few weeks.
Raducanu’s run to the semi-finals of the Nottingham Open was backed up by a surge to the quarter-finals in Eastbourne, where she collected her first win against a top ten player when she beat Jessica Pegula.
Now Raducanu has backed up those wins with three impressive victories at Wimbledon, as the hype around the 2021 US Open champion builds again.
The manner of Raducanu’s impressive dismantling of world No 9 Maria Sakkari on Friday added to the belief that the Brit could go deep into the second week at Wimbledon.
She was already up to No 92 in the live WTA Rankings prior to her match against Sun, but a three-set defeat burst the bubble of enthusiasm that had inflated around her.
Raducanu was cast in the position of hot favourite against a player who had never won a main-draw match at a slam until beating eighth seed Zheng Qinwen in the opening round.
Sun, a New Zealander with a heritage even more cosmopolitan than her opponent’s, took the match to Raducanu from the first point, quickly opening up a 3-0 lead and imposing herself with her vicious left-handed forehand.
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Raducanu was unable to find any real penetration off that wing but hung on grimly in the second set and got her reward for some courageous break-point saves when Sun tightened up a little in the final game.
The home crowd roared their approval but a deathly hush fell over Centre Court shortly afterwards when Raducanu took a nasty tumble behind the baseline and sought medical treatment.
The main issue appeared to be her back, which she had been clutching at various points, and in the third set her resistance ran out.
“I’ve been managing a stiff back since yesterday,” said Raducanu. “I think it was just exaggerated today. I was feeling it during the match. I think especially on serve it was affecting me a bit. But I gave everything I had on the day.”
On her wrist, she added: “With the balls being quite heavy on the grass, it’s just something that I have to manage.”
Raducanu is not playing in the Olympics and her next tournament will instead be at the Citi Open in Washington at the end of this month.
She will head into the North American hard court swing in good spirits, saying: “I beat two top-10 players within two weeks, which is a pretty big deal for me, seeing as the whole US Open even I didn’t play one top-10 player. I think I have to take confidence from that.
“Six months ago, when I was starting out after surgery, I would have signed for fourth round at Wimbledon. Of course I’m disappointed. Of course I want more. I think everything does happen for a reason. It just fuels the fire and makes me more hungry.
“You don’t want things to happen too easily and too quickly. I had that before. I don’t necessarily want just a massive spike.”
A win against Sun would have fired Raducanu into the quarter-finals at Wimbledon for the first time and into the top 60 of the live rankings.
Donna Vekic would then have been lying in wait in a last-eight contest and another Raducanu victory in that match would see her rise to a position just outside of the top 50.
A place in the semi-finals would have earned her another clutch of ranking points that would take her towards the top 40.
If she repeated her heroics at the 2021 US Open and won her second Grand Slam at Wimbledon, Raducanu would have been back up to around No 15 in the WTA Rankings.
Yet all of those ambitions are on hold after the defeat against Sun, with the American hard courts now beckoning for Raducanu.
