Emma Raducanu is likely to be seeded at the upcoming Australian Open, but she has plenty to do on the practice court over the next fortnight if she wants to justify her place among the protected players.
The first week of the new season found Raducanu opening with a defeat against Maria Sakkari, an opponent she had dominated in all four of their previous meetings.
The contest was part of the United Cup, a team event played by mixed teams of men and women. Based in Perth, Great Britain had edged past Japan in their first match on Saturday, but Raducanu’s 6-3, 3-6, 6-1 defeat sealed a 2-0 loss to Greece, and thus eliminated them from the tournament.
There were extenuating circumstances, if one chose to look for them. This will be Raducanu’s fifth visit to the Australian Open, and yet she has never once come in with a solid bank of work and preparation behind her.
In 2022, she arrived on the back of a bout of Covid. In 2023, she sprained her ankle at her build-up event in Auckland. In 2024, she was understandably rusty after a nine-month lay-off following double-wrist surgery. And last year she was struggling with the after-effects of a serious back spasm, which lingered for so long that she missed three weeks of off-season practice.
This time around, Raducanu has spent some of her winter break in Barcelona with new coach Francis Roig. Unfortunately, though, she wasn’t able to train with full intensity. She has been restricted by bruising to her foot – a niggling injury which surfaced before Christmas, and which kept her out of Saturday’s tie against Japan.
On top of that, she and Roig have been tinkering with her forehand. The takeback to this year’s model is a little higher and the swing slightly longer. Whether that will translate into more penetration on that flank – which has always been Raducanu’s less natural side – we must wait to discover.
Since making her name in New York five years ago, Raducanu has tried a number of different solutions to this essential shot without ever feeling completely comfortable with the result. At least, she hasn’t been able to rediscover the extraordinary timing and fluidity that she displayed on every shot throughout that US Open victory in 2021. Mind you, back then she was in the unusual position of playing without any pressure, pre-conceptions or expectation.
Tentative and underpowered in the first set of this latest match, Raducanu looked like what she is: a player trying to apply some unfamiliar technical niceties on the hoof. She was doing nothing but popping the ball back into play, and thus allowed Sakkari – who had beaten former world No 1 Naomi Osaka on Friday – to take control with her muscular groundstrokes.
Had the match all been like that, there would have been real reason for concern. As it was, we saw Raducanu raise her intensity at the end of the second set. For a short period, she was making Sakkari do the running. And when she goes through her debrief with Roig – who was doubling up with British captain Tim Henman in the courtside seats – the feedback will probably be pretty simple: “More of that assertive ball-striking, please, and less of the anaemic stuff we saw in the first set.”
After seeing a couple of break points get away from her in the third game of the decider, Raducanu’s performance levels fell away again. Her petrol gauge appeared to be flashing empty. Indeed, she looked in such a hurry to get off the court that, after one chipped return of a wide serve, she didn’t even bother recovering back to the middle of the court, preferring to turn her back on Sakkari’s easy putaway.
While some might consider this to be a cop-out, there was also some logic at play. Ultimately, the United Cup was never going to be the priority for Raducanu’s trip Down Under. She signed up for Perth in search of preparation, and she got what she wanted: a thorough three-set work-out. A woman who peaks for the bigger events, she always has a clear idea of what she needs to do, even if her body doesn’t always co-operate with her intentions.
If you want evidence of this point, it’s worth remembering her bloody-minded campaign at last year’s Australian Open. She really should have lost in the first round, after those back spasms had left her stranded in the middle of a service rebuild and coughing up double-faults as if they were ticker tape.
And yet, despite her messy lead-in, she still beat Ekaterina Alexandrova and Amanda Anisimova before suffering a walloping at the hands of Iga Swiatek in the last 32. Here was a foretaste of the horrible draws Raducanu had to deal with throughout last season: all three of these players ended 2025 inside the world’s top 10.
But what of the other players on show on Saturday? In the first match of Great Britain’s tie with Greece, Billy Harris did a good job of pushing former Australian Open finalist Stefanos Tsitsipas to the limit. He wasn’t far away from what would have been a career-best win, but was eventually pipped at the post, losing a deciding-set tie-break by a 7-4 margin.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Tasman Sea, British No 3 Fran Jones managed to sneak over the line where Harris fell just short. Playing No 15 Emma Navarro at the WTA event in Auckland, Jones claimed a three-set win: 7-5, 2-6, 6-4. It was only her second win over a member of the top 50, in eight attempts, with the previous instance having come against No 44 Saisai Zheng five years ago.
Finally, there was at least a glimmer of encouragement for Jack Draper, the man who broke into the top five last season, as he was named in the British Davis Cup team to face Norway in Oslo early next month.
The other two leading singles players, Jacob Fearnley and Cameron Norrie, are also in the team, so Draper will be able to wait until the last minute to see whether he is confident of playing competitively for the first time since his painful effort at August’s US Open.
Draper has been battling a bone bruise in his serving elbow for more than six months, and recently withdrew from the Australian Open to protect what he described as a challenging and complex injury.