Emma Raducanu debuted a new career-high ranking on the WTA Tour, with the British player currently ranked 11th in the world.
It's been a crazy couple of months for Raducanu, who announced herself to the broader tennis audience during last year's Wimbledon Championships. She followed that up with a couple of solid outings on American hard courts, after which she did something unprecedented.
As a qualifier, she conquered the US Open without dropping a set. Her meteoric rise on the WTA Rankings is a direct consequence of that because the Brit basically gets to keep every point she earns.
She did not play professionally last year and does not defend any points. With a strong outing at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart, Raducanu achieved her best ranking ever, at no. 11 in the world.
She's very close to making her Top 10 debut, and it will probably happen during the European clay swing. She is set to play at the Madrid Open and the Italian Open in Rome, where she could earn the points she's missing to enter the elite group of players on the WTA Tour.
Both tournaments are of the WTA 1000 category, meaning that Raducanu's success at those events would secure her a significant rise in the rankings. This is especially true since other players obviously have points to defend while her sheet is clean.
Currently, the tenth-ranked player on the WTA Tour is Ons Jabeur, and she only trails her by about 200 points. Garbine Muguruza is the ninth highest-ranked player, with 100 more points to spare.
A good run at both events could see Raducanu ranked inside the Top 10. Even if she doesn't accomplish this now, the teenager's career is still very young, and she'll have plenty of years to do it eventually.
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