Emma Raducanu is about to play in one of her most significant tournaments of the year, with the ranking target she has been chasing for the last year on the line.
Raducanu made it clear that her aim for the final half of 2025 was to achieve a seeding for the first Grand Slam of this year.
She reached that goal going into the Australian Open, but it didn’t help the British No 1 as she was beaten in the second round by Austria’s Anastasia Potapova as she battled ongoing injury concerns.
Those fitness issues have been a recurring theme throughout this season and now she is preparing to try and defend the 215 points she collected from her impressive run to the Miami Open quarter-finals last year.
Those points dropping off her total ahead of the second WTA 1000 event of this month will push Raducanu down the rankings and it could threaten her hopes of being seeded for the French Open in June and Wimbledon the following month.
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Raducanu has a chance to defend those ranking points with another strong run in Miami, but an early exit would see her ranking slide towards a position where she will be in danger of losing her position in the top 32.
That is where she would need to be to get a seeding for Roland Garros and with clay court tennis not her strongest suit, Raducanu may struggle to make up ground in the run up to the French Open.
So she needs to bounce back from her thumping 6-1, 6-1 defeat against Amanda Anisimova in the Indian Wells Open last week.
The manner of that defeat was damaging, with Raducanu admitting she was no match for a player who had too much power for her.
“When I’m playing someone who’s at the top like that, I think they have an extra 10 miles an hour on their serve than me,” Raducanu told Sky Sports after the Anisimova defeat.
“If I’m not feeling it, that gap feels more evident in terms of weight of shot, in terms of power.
“You just feel a little bit behind and your punches aren’t landing as much as theirs are.
“I need to be aggressive when playing those players, but I think there’s still a long way to go to be doing that. I need to use my strengths and probably mix it up a bit more.
“I have to take some positives. The first match here [at Indian Wells] was better than a lot of matches I have been playing recently. I had a great first match, felt in a really good place with my game.
“But a match like that [against Anisimova] is never easy to take. I couldn’t really get into the rally. The ball felt very quick to do anything off of and to try and survive in the point was very difficult.”
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The Anisimova defeat was tough for Raducanu after she went into the event suggesting she believed she could compete against the game’s biggest hitters from the back of the court.
The gulf in power and class between Anisimova and Raducanu in that mismatch must have left Raducanu wondering if that ambition was realistic, but she will get another chance to play the tennis she wants at next week’s Miami Open.
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