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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.
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
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.