Emma Raducanu will begin her grass-court season at the 2024 Nottingham Open after being granted a wild card.
The Nottingham Open is part of the WTA 250 series and one of three tour-level grass-court tournaments held in the UK this summer before Wimbledon. Main draw action begins on June 10th, a day after the Roland Garros men's final.
Four of the world's Top 30 players will play, including World No. 9 Ons Jabeur, who will make her debut. British No. 1 Katie Boulter was the only home player who earned a main draw spot based on ranking.
But Raducanu will join her thanks to a wild card. The 21-year-old can't enter WTA tournaments with her current ranking of World No. 212. Her ranking fell considerably after she took eight months off from competition in April 2023 to undergo triple surgery.
After rejoining the tour at the start of 2024, the former US Open champion has struggled for consistency. She won back-to-back matches in only two WTA tournaments.
She abandoned her clay-court swing after a disappointing first-round exit in Madrid. A week before that, Raducanu appeared to have turned a corner following a quarterfinal run in Stuttgart, where she ran World No. 1 Iga Swiatek very close in a tight straight-sets defeat.
She was hoping to receive a wild card in the main draw of Roland Garros because her special ranking of No. 103 was only sufficient for the qualifying draw. But the French Open organizers allocated most of the wild cards to home players, leaving Raducanu dejected.
The Briton chose to withdraw from Roland Garros qualifying on the eve of the tournament's start. She cited the need to prepare for the grass and hard courts for the second half of the season.
And she won't have to wait any longer as she prepares to play her first match on grass since losing to Caroline Garcia at the 2022 Wimbledon Championships.
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