Emma Raducanu may be fearing the worst as she closes in on a rankings breakthrough

Emma Raducanu served up one of her most impressive performances of 2024 as she beat eighth seed Yue Yuan to reach the Qatar Open quarter-finals, but what comes next could be one of her toughest challenges yet.Raducanu’s powerful return of serves, especially as she attacked Yuan’s second serves, proved to be a winning strategy and now she is closing in on a return to the top 50 of the WTA Rankings.

That would be an impressive achievement after 2023 was brought to a painful halt for Raducanu as she underwent surgery on both wrists and her ankle, with her rise up the rankings all the more impressive given the limited tournament schedule she has taken on. After a thrilling penultimate game of the match so Raudcanu moved to within a point of victory on five occasions, the Brit won the next game to secure a 6-4, 6-3 win.

“I think the key to my success today was trying to let go of any frustration,” said Raducanu
“Closing out the match I had a lot of match points and couldn’t convert, so just staying focused and breaking in that last game. “The crowd support meant a lot. I love playing in Korea and Seoul is one of my favourite cities.
“I find here the fans really get behind me and I find that particularly special.”

Picking up two wins in Korea is an impressive start to her Asian swing, but Raducanu now faces a big challenge as top seed Daria Kastkina lies in wait in the quarter-finals. The Russian player beat Raducanu 6-2, 6-2 in the quarter-finals of the WTA 500 tournament at Eastbourne back in June. That result inspired an outclassed Raducanu to suggest Kasatkina may be ‘the toughest opponent’ to play in windy conditions, which tend to be ever present on the south coast of England for that tournament in June.

Kasatkina confirmed her class in those conditions as she went on to win the Eastbourne title and she also has another win against Raducanu on her record from their first career meeting at the Ostrava Open in 2022. The wind should not be an issue in Seoul, where steamy conditions have been more of a concern for players getting used to playing in big humidity. Raducanu will also be hoping her game is better suited to hard courts she will play Kasatkina on in her next match, with a key area she will need to improve being her second serve.

For a second match in success in Seoul, Raducau won only 35 per-cent of her second serve points and many of her service games proved to be long and demanding. She pulled out some big first serves to save some of the nine break points she faced, but she was broken three times in the two sets. This is clearly an area of her game she is working on, as she revealed in an interview with the WTA website. “If you watch my serve over the past few months, since the clay season it’s gone through a lot of iterations in terms of swing,” she said.

“In general, if you play a lot of tournaments, things move out of place without you really realising, and then it’s harder to get the natural feeling back. “We’ve been working hard the last week looking at the swing, and which swing suits me best. It’s been pretty big changes, it’s not like we’re just changing the ball placement. “Me and my coach (Nick Cavaday) decided we were going to take a risk and we were going to tweak things. We know it might not pay off short-term.

“But one thing I do back myself on is I pick things up pretty quickly. In the first match it didn’t transfer yet, but today it definitely did. I just have to think bigger picture. “My goals are finishing this season strong but inevitably to set myself up in the best way possible for next year, because next year I really want to hit the ground running.”