Emma Raducanu was expected to play at the 2024 Strasbourg Open next week but has withdrawn from the tournament ahead of schedule.
Following an upgrade, this year's Strasbourg Open will be part of the WTA 500 series. The main draw action will begin on May 19th. Eight of the world's Top 20 players will vie to win one of the last two tour-level tournaments before Roland Garros.
Raducanu accepted a wild card into the event, which was surprising considering the schedule overlap. Playing in Strasbourg meant that the British tennis star forfeited her spot in the qualifying tournament for Roland Garros in Paris, which begins on May 20th.
No explanation has been given for Raducanu's absence from Strasbourg, and the draw is expected to be revealed later this week. But at the same time, it looks like the 21-year-old's decision to withdraw from the event was largely affected by the recent announcement of Roland Garros wild cards.
Raducanu was hoping that her status as a Grand Slam champion and a former Top 10 player would be sufficient to earn one of the eight spots allocated to wild card entrants.
But that was not the case, with the tournament allocating six of the eight wild cards to home players and the other two to the USA's Sachia Vickery and Australia's Ajla Tomljanovic, who returned to action from an injury layoff.
Raducanu has a special ranking of No. 103, which won't meet the cut-off mark for entry into the main draw unless there is a significant number of withdrawals from the initial entry list (five to be precise).
A similar scenario happened at the 2024 Australian Open, where she earned a main draw berth after a spate of withdrawals. If that's not the case in Paris, she will have to play three rounds of qualifying for the French Open, which will kick off on Monday, May 20th.
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