Emma Raducanu is set to compete at the 2024 Strasbourg Open following the release of the official entry list.
This year, the Strasbourg Open has been upgraded to become a WTA 500 event and will commence on May 19th. Raducanu is seeking to extend her clay-court stay and accumulate sufficient minutes and momentum on the surface before Roland Garros.
However, the decision to play in Strasbourg has raised plenty of eyebrows, particularly given the date's overlap with Roland Garros qualifying. At the moment, Raducanu hasn't earned a main draw berth for the year's second Grand Slam tournament, which begins on May 26th.
She is currently sweating on a wild card from the tournament. If she is not offered one, she will have two options, one of which is not certain. Raducanu must hope that five players withdraw from the initial entry list so that she can enter the field with a special ranking of No. 103.
The only other assured way apart from a wild card entry is to navigate three rounds of qualifying. However, playing in Strasbourg will pretty much confirm that Raducanu is not looking to do so. That is because the Roland Garros qualifying rounds begin on May 20th.
At that time, Raducanu will be playing in Strasbourg. Prioritizing the WTA 500 event might potentially mean that she could have inside information about a possible wild card for the clay Slam. Because of her status as a Grand Slam champion, Raducanu will most certainly be a favorite to get one.
Recently, she bemoaned her Madrid Open first-round defeat to Maria Lourdes Carle and blamed exhaustion. The 21-year-old has played non-stop tennis since mid-April. She helped Great Britain qualify for the Billie Jean King Cup Finals by stunning France in a qualifying tie.
She also made the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix quarterfinals in the subsequent week, where she ran Iga Swiatek very close in a tight straight sets defeat.
So far, she hasn't announced whether she will be in Rome, where the former US Open champion might need to play qualifying if she is not among the last two wild card entrants (six have been named).
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