Jan 4 (Reuters) \u2013 Emma Raducanu\u2019s return to tennis has been delayed after the Briton pulled out of her tie against Japan\u2019s \u200dNaomi Osaka at the United Cup mixed team event in Perth on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Raducanu has struggled with form and fitness problems since her U.S. Open triumph as a teenager in 2021 but she rediscovered \u200cher rhythm in a run \u200cto the Miami Open quarter-finals last year before ending her season prematurely due to physical issues.<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old Briton was set to play her first match since \u200bOctober against Osaka as she builds up her preparations for the Australian Open Grand \u200dSlam, but team captain Tim \u200bHenman said the tie had come \u200btoo early.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to be honest, she was \u200dvery close,\u201d Henman told Australian broadcaster Nine.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t an easy decision. She had been building up and practising really well. But we just felt this morning it was a little \u200dbit too early.\u201d<\/p>\n
Local media reports said Raducanu withdrew due to injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think she\u2019s necessarily out of this \u200dtournament just \u200dyet. So we\u2019re keeping our \u200bfingers crossed,\u201d Henman said, without giving \u200bdetails.<\/p>\n
Britain\u2019s \u2060next group stage match is against \u200cGreece. The team are already without world number 10 Jack Draper, who is nursing a left arm injury.<\/p>\n
The Australian Open runs from January 18 to February 1.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Shrivathsa Sridhar in Bengaluru; Editing by \u2060Peter Rutherford)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jan 4 (Reuters) \u2013 Emma Raducanu\u2019s return to tennis has been delayed after the Briton pulled out of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-388100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}