Emma Raducanu is set to return to tennis at next month's ASB Classic in Auckland, where she has been granted a wild card.
The British tennis star is currently ranked outside the world's Top 200 because of her inactivity in the second half of last season due to multiple surgeries on her wrists and ankle. Raducanu must now use her Special Ranking (SR) to enter WTA events in the early stages of her comeback.
A Special Ranking (SR), or Protected Ranking (PR), is a provision that the tour gives to injured players or those who take maternity leave, which is no shorter than six months, to use the actual ranking of the last tournament in which they played or received prize money when they return.
Instead of starting to build their ranking from scratch, these players will be in a privileged position of sorts. For WTA players, they can use the SR for up to eight tournaments if they are out of action between six months and one year.
Raducanu last played a WTA event in mid-April, where she was comprehensively beaten by Jelena Ostapenko in Stuttgart. She was ranked World No. 85 at that event. Recently, when the entry list for the 2024 Australian Open was released, the Briton had a Special Ranking of No. 103 next to her name.
This would have earned Raducanu a main draw berth at the Australian Open any other year (Grand Slam main draw berth based on ranking is 104). But not next month's tournament in Melbourne, where several women will return with a higher Special Ranking than Raducanu's.
Also, tennis fans questioned why the 21-year-old's Special Ranking differed from her actual ranking when she last played on tour. Well, it turns out that Raducanu's last official tournament in which she signed up to play was in Madrid, where she was due to face Viktoriya Tomova but pulled out hours before kick-off.
Because Raducanu was entitled to payment despite her no-show, the WTA rules stipulate that her Special Ranking would be per her actual ranking at the Madrid Open (World No. 103).
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