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Welcome back to the Monday Tennis Briefing, true The Athletics will explain the stories behind the stories of the past week on the track.
This week, Emma Raducanu made her plans for 2025, the offseason happened and the Australian Open handed out some not-so-wild wildcards.
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How will Emma Raducanu deal with her rise in the rankings?
Raducanu entered 2024 at No. 301 in the world rankings after an injury-plagued 2023. Her “special” ranking – the WTA term for a protected ranking – and the occasional wildcards a Grand Slam champion encounters allowed her to compete at best . of the events she wanted to undertake, while taking breaks when necessary. Her ranking now stands at number 57.
“One thing with the WTA is that we’re pretty much made to play the events when we’re in a certain ranking. Where my ranking was and is, I didn’t have to play every event,” she told reporters at London’s National Tennis Center this month.
Raducanu added that “having to play every tournament” is a big burden, not only physically, but also in creating a balanced schedule. “Having a mulligan to not play a tournament would be a really good addition,” she said.
One of the big talking points this year has been the demands placed on players by the increased number of WTA mandatory events, including all Grand Slams, all WTA 1000 events and six 500-level tournaments for those ranked high enough for automatic participation (designed to strengthen those events just below the majors and to give the 250-level events just below more of a regional focus). World No. 2 Iga Swiatek lost first place to Aryna Sabalenka in October after not playing enough 500-level events.
“It doesn’t end well and it makes tennis less fun for us, so to speak,” Swiatek said at a news conference at the Cincinnati Open in August. “I don’t think it should be like that because we deserve to rest a little more.”
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Raducanu, who missed the Asian hard-court swing in September with a foot injury after organizing her season around that block of tournaments, said the time away helped beyond physical recovery. She went to visit her grandmother in China, which “was a bit of a turning point.”
“I played the piano and painted. I’m exploring my artistic side a bit. It just got me thinking. That last foot injury made me say, ‘I want to stay healthy next year.’
“That was probably a big moment where I wanted to spend more time and energy on my fitness.”
Raducanu, who subsequently brought in fitness coach Yutaka Nakamura for the 2025 season, wants to plan her events “holistically” after feeling her planning was too short-sighted. She wants to ask herself, ‘What is best for me this year? What is the main goal? How are we going to build the schedule around the main objective for this year?”
Whatever she decides, Raducanu says that in 2025, “All I want to do is align with a philosophy. I don’t want to do small things. Every decision I make, I want it to be connected to a deeper reason. Not just, ‘Okay, it’s spontaneous, I’m going to do this.’ Everything must be connected.”
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Emma Raducanu has played all-or-nothing tennis. Can she just play now?
Charlie Eccleshare
Again, how wild is a wildcard?
With the prize money for reaching the first round of a Grand Slam approaching $100,000 (£80,000), the countries hosting these tournaments may want to consider adjusting their process of handing out wildcard entries.
It has always been quite unfair to young players from countries other than Australia, France, Great Britain and the United States that they essentially have no chance of receiving the free pass that host countries hand out to their own country. With the windfall it now brings, things seem to be getting more and more out of hand.
Tennis Australia released the wildcards for next month’s Australian Open on Friday.
Stan Wawrinka has one. He is 39 and a three-time Grand Slam champion who won the tournament in 2014. He was also defeated in the first round of the US Open by Italian Mattia Bellucci. He is currently ranked 161 in the world.
Stan Wawrinka defeated Rafael Nadal in the 2014 men’s singles final. (Matt King/Getty Images)
Apart from the entries they trade with other Grand Slam hosts and the champion of an Asia-Pacific play-off, the Aussies kept the rest to themselves. The other men:
- Tristan Schoolkate, 23, 1-3 in 2024 on the ATP Tour, ranked 168.
- Li Tu, 28, 0-4 on the ATP Tour in 2024, was ranked 174th. He did take a set against Carlos Alcaraz at the US Open.
- James McCabe, 0-4 on the ATP Tour in 2024, ranked 256.
On the women’s side, Daria Saville, No. 108, and Ajla Tomljanovic, No. 109, are defensible. They have struggled with injuries in recent years, have been ranked in the top 50 and are on the cusp of a main draw appearance. They could very well move up the rankings once filming begins.
Maya Joint, 18, isn’t far behind at No. 116, but she’s just 1-2 on tour level. Emerson Jones is 16 and ranked No. 375. Talia Gibson is 20 and ranked No. 140 but has yet to win a tour-level match.
Grand Slams rightly market themselves as the pinnacle of tennis. That may be true, but they are not nearly as strong as they could be, with fewer free tickets for their main draws from their home country.
Matt Futterman
And how long is a piece of string (or an off-season piece of tennis)?
Want to know why players complain so much about the offseason? Because there isn’t one. Not really.
Ben Shelton took four days off.
Carlos Alcaraz hasn’t touched his rackets for ten days, which may sound like a lot.
Players competing in the United Cup must be in Australia on Christmas Eve, just eight days away. From much of the world it takes two days to get there. A handful of top players, including Taylor Fritz, are heading to Abu Dhabi for the World Tennis League exhibition from December 19 to 22. Many of them use it as part of their preparation for the season.
Fritz played his last match of 2024 at the Davis Cup on November 20. Between then and landing in Abu Dhabi he will have squeezed in a 10-day fitness block in Florida and a 10-day field camp at LA Factor in intercontinental travel. and you can count the days off on about one hand.
That’s not low season. That’s a long weekend.
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How the battle to improve the tennis calendar threatens to destroy its soul
Matt Futterman
Recommended reading:
🏆 The winners of the week
🎾 WTA:
🏆 Viktorija Golubic (No. 7 seed) Certainly. Celine Naef 7-5, 6-4 to win Limoges opened (125) in Limoges, France. It is her fourth WTA 125 title.
📅 Coming soon
🎾 ATP
📍Jeddah, Saudi Arabia: Final ATP Next Gen with Arthur Fils, Alex Michelsen, Jakub Mensik, Pupil Tien.
🎾 Exhibition
📍Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates: World tennis competition with Iga Swiatek, Daniil Medvedev, Aryna Sabalenka, Nick Kyrgios.
Tell us what you noticed this week in the comments below as the men’s and women’s tours continue.
(Top photo: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)