{"id":416593,"date":"2026-01-18T03:27:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T03:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/416593\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T03:27:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T03:27:08","slug":"emma-raducanu-says-late-night-opener-makes-no-sense-in-swipe-at-australia-open-australian-open-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/416593\/","title":{"rendered":"Emma Raducanu says late-night opener \u2018makes no sense\u2019 in swipe at Australia Open | Australian Open 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emma Raducanu has criticised the Australian Open\u2019s \u201cvery difficult\u201d scheduling but remains focused on her game after being lined up to compete in a late-night slot on the opening day.<\/p>\n

Raducanu will play her first-round match against Mananchaya Sawangkaew on Sunday night, leaving the British No 1 with minimal time to adjust to the conditions at Melbourne Park after competing in Hobart. With the Sunday start, the Australian Open\u2019s first round is now split across three days, so Raducanu\u2019s first match could have been played on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very difficult,\u201d she said. \u201cYou would love to have more time in the environment, more time practising, but I guess I was pretty much handed the schedule to try and turn it around and make the most out of what is in front of me. I think it\u2019s easy to get down and complain about it, but it\u2019s not going to help. So I\u2019m just trying to focus and turn it around for tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Raducanu lost to the world No 204, Taylah Preston, in the quarter-finals<\/a> of the Hobart International. A delayed flight meant she only arrived in Melbourne late on Friday. She will have just one training session in Melbourne before her first round match.<\/p>\n

Coming after a best-of five-sets men\u2019s match, Alexander Bublik against Jenson Brooksby, Raducanu\u2019s match is due to start at a late hour against Sawangkaew, a talented 23-year-old Thai who broke into the top 100 last June. Sawangkaew is ranked No 195 owing to a six-month injury layoff.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s very difficult to be scheduling women\u2019s matches after a potential five-set match,\u201d said Raducanu. \u201cTo me, it doesn\u2019t really make as much sense, but I think after seeing it, the initial reaction is probably, like: \u2018Oh, it\u2019s a late one.\u2019 Then you deal with it, and you try and shift your day and adjust.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday I\u2019m going to practise and see what it\u2019s like. I don\u2019t think I have been in that situation. Only once before maybe when I played the semis of the US Open. I played second night match, but other than that, I haven\u2019t played that late. So for me, it\u2019s a new experience, something that I need to learn to do. Hopefully if I\u2019m playing this game for a long time, I\u2019ll probably be in this situation again, so it\u2019s a good learning step to try and adjust and deal with that day, as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Novak Djokovic says the PTPA lawsuit prompted his exit from the players\u2019 body he helped found. Photograph: Morgan Hancock\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Novak Djokovic cited the Professional Tennis<\/a> Players\u2019 Association\u2019s lawsuit against the governing bodies as a significant reason behind his surprise decision to sever ties with the organisation. Djokovic, who co-founded the PTPA alongside the former player Vasek Pospisil, announced at the beginning of the year that he would be stepping away.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a tough call for me to exit the PTPA, but I had to do that, because I felt like my name was overused in pretty much every single article or communication channel,\u201d he said. \u201cI felt like people, whenever they think about PTPA, they think it\u2019s my organisation, which is a wrong idea from the very beginning. So this was supposed to be everyone, every player\u2019s organisation across the board, men and women.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I also didn\u2019t like the way the leadership was taking the direction of the PTPA, and so I decided to step out. Does that mean that I\u2019m not supporting PTPA? No, I am. I am still wishing them all the best, because I think that there is room and there is a need for 100% players-only representation existing in our ecosystem.<\/p>\n

\u201cGoing back to the lawsuit, as well, back in Miami, March last year, it was partly I exited because of that, because I didn\u2019t agree with everything that was in there, and I decided not to be one of the player plaintiffs. So that was also one of the big reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emma Raducanu has criticised the Australian Open\u2019s \u201cvery difficult\u201d scheduling but remains focused on her game after being…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-416593","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\/416593","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=416593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}