Emma Raducanu is already on the road to fitness as she faces a race against time to recover from her latest injury problems ahead of next month's Billie Jean King Cup Finals in Glasgow. Great Britain team captain Anne Keothavang recently provided an update on her star player's fitness after she was forced to withdraw from this week's Translyvania Open due to a wrist injury.
Raducanu has suffered from multiple injury issues in recent weeks, which hampered her Slovenia Open and Korea Open campaigns in the last month. The wrist injury also forced her to withdraw from next week's Guadalajara Open, which means that the Billie Jean King Cup Finals is the only tournament remaining on her calendar before the end of the season.
Keothavong named Emma Raducanu in her five-member team for the multi-nation tournament that starts on November 8 and the 19-year-old has a month to recover in time for the tournament. Keothavong was upbeat about Raducanu's recovery and revealed that she is already working hard on her rehab program.
"I was literally on the phone to her this morning at the airport. We have the benefit of time on our side. The Billie Jean King Cup Finals isn’t for another month," Anne Keothavong told PA news agency. "She’s doing her best to rest up and recover and she’s got a rehab programme in place."
Keothavong admitted that only time will tell whether Raducanu gets fit before the Billie Jean King Cup Finals and hopes that the youngster will manage her rehab well.
"We’ll just have to see how it goes and she’s got to manage it and look after herself, which is the most important thing," Keothavong added.
Raducanu made her debut at the Billie Jean King Cup earlier this year in Great Britain's tie against the Czech Republic in Prague. She won her first match against Tereza Martincova before losing her second and final match to Marketa Vondrousova.
Emma Raducanu is set to experience another drop in the WTA Rankings
Emma Raducanu's withdrawal from the Transylvania Open comes as another big blow in her rankings situation as she will drop another 60 points that she earned courtesy of her run to the quarterfinals of last year's Transylvania Open. Raducanu has dropped to No. 68 in the rankings from No. 66 over the last two weeks and is likely to drop down to around No. 75 when the new list of rankings is released next week.
The 19-year-old made her Top-10 debut in July and was ranked No. 11 before her US Open title defense last month. However, a first-round exit at the 2022 US Open saw her drop to No. 83 in the WTA Rankings.
She then moved up a few places courtesy of her run to the Korea Open semifinals two weeks ago. Emma Raducanu was forced to retire midway through her semifinal against Jelena Ostapenko due to a glute injury.