Emma Raducanu withdraws with injury from China Open in further fitness blow

Emma Raducanu will be on the sidelines again this week after announcing she is pulling out of the upcoming WTA 1000 event in Beijing.

In a social media post, Raducanu identified the injury she suffered in Seoul last week as sprained ligaments in her left foot, and said that she would skip Beijing to give herself time to recover.

This is the first genuine injury setback that Raducanu has experienced this season, after making her return from double wrist and ankle surgery at the start of the year.

The foot problem forced her to retire from her quarter-final in Seoul on Saturday morning after losing the first set 6-1 to top seed Daria Kasatkina. This was the seventh mid-match retirement of her career, of which four happened during her injury-plagued 2022.

In her post, Raducanu did not offer any further information about her upcoming commitments. She had previously told an interviewer that she wanted to play a “really long block in Asia at the end of the year”.

This “long block” could include the whole Chinese swing as it continues through Wuhan, Ningbo and Guangzhou.

At present, Raducanu has a wildcard entry for the second of those events – the recently upgraded WTA 500 in Ningbo – and is on the entry list to play in the qualifying event in Wuhan, which starts on Oct 7. She has a good chance of also being given a late wildcard into the main draw there, should she declare herself fit.

Raducanu scored two wins in Seoul last week: the first a scrappy affair against Peyton Stearns and the second a much cleaner performance against last year’s finalist Yue Yuan. That lifted her 16 places in the world rankings, to No 54. On form, she looks capable of going a fair way higher, to the top 30 at least. But her biggest challenge throughout her short career has always been staying fit.

Two other British women have earned direct entry to Beijing and will play their matches later this week. Harriet Dart will face talented Danish 21-year-old Clara Tauson in the first round, while 26th seed Katie Boulter has a first-round bye before coming up against either Italian clay-court specialist Martina Trevisan or American net-rusher Taylor Townsend.

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