(Tennis news) British tennis star Emma Radcanu has said that she will “hopefully” be ready to participate in the Australian Open next week. The 20 year old was left tearful after being forced to retire in her second-round match against Viktoria Kuzmova at the ASB Classic in Auckland last week. The Australian Open is set to begin on January 16th and Raducanu will undoubtedly hope to improve on her second round elimination last year.

“I’m just taking a day at a time, honestly, and just trying to, every single day, try as best as possible to see and make progress. And we’ll see hopefully by Monday, or whenever the tournament starts, I’ll be OK and ready. But we’re just taking it a day at a time and not trying to expect too much at this point. I mean, it was really unfortunate, to be honest last week, because I was feeling great about my season and I was feeling really good with the preparation I did physically. And I just had an accident on the court, which I don’t know what I could have done to really prevent that.” – Emma Raducanu to Tennis Australia

Raducanu blamed “slick” and “very slippery” courts for her ankle injury while the Auckland tournament director insisted that the court was safe. Since her shocking victory at the US Open in 2021, Raducanu has suffered many injuries and was forced to retire four times in 2022 and has recently recovered from the wrist injury. As a result, her rankings have dropped from 10th to 75th. As things stand, the 2023 Australian Open will not feature Venus Williams, Carlos Alcaraz, Simona Halep and Naomi Osaka and the tournament organisers will hope to have Raducanu available for the first Grand Slam of the season.

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