Emma Raducanu turned in an impressive performance

Emma Raducanu has made an encouraging start to 2024 and her current ranking may not justify her true position in the game.

The 2021 US Open champion halted her career in April of last year as she underwent surgery on both of her wrists and her ankle, ruling her out of action until her comeback in New Zealand last month.

A first round win in Auckland and at the Australian Open was backed up by an impressive performance in her opening match in Abu Dhabi as she recorded a 6-4 6-1 win over world No 26 Marie Bouzkova.

Her display against Bouzkova was hugely impressive and she confirmed she is confident of pushing up the WTA rankings now that she is playing without pain.

“I’m still finding my feet on the match court, I’m not fully there but that will come with time,” said Raducanu. “I’m very patient and very grateful to enjoy what I’m doing.

“I’m just trying to improve my game because I’m not the finished product, far from it. I feel like now is the time to start because I’ve had some illness and injuries over the couple of years since (winning the US Open), so I’m looking forward to working on my game, improving my level and the results will take care of themselves.

“I’ve never really had the chance to do proper training weeks back-to-back. For six or seven months, before I ended up having the surgeries, I was only practising one or two hours a day just to limit the load on the wrists,” she said.

“In a way, it’s frustrating that the last couple of years haven’t been how I’ve wanted but I think we take a lesson from everything and now is the time to start that work, and I’m really enjoying it.

“For me, success would be seeing my level improving in practice first and then in matches. I know that when my level will be there, putting it into a match will take some time to apply. But I know that seeing the level increase, that results will follow. Also, I would love to win a title of any grade.”

Raducanu is currently ranked at No 296 in the WTA rankings, but the level she is playing at is clearly above that.

By playing events like the WTA 500 tournament in Abu Dhabi, she has a chance to make a quick leap up the rankings and the new UTR rankings suggest a place in the top 50 would be a more accurate reflection of Raducanu’s current position in the women’s game.

The method for calculating the UTR ratings differs greatly from the rolling ATP list, which ranks players based on the points they collect over 52 weeks.

Raducanu is sitting at No 41 in the latest UTR ratings, with wins against players of Bouzkova’s ranking giving her more of a boost in the UTR list than she will get in the WTA rankings.

Victories against higher-ranked played are worth more in the UTR list than the official WTA ranking, meaning they offer up a more accurate reflection of the current form at the top of the game.

The UTR rankings are based on the current form from the last few weeks and months rather than reflecting results that occurred up to a year ago, with the system created to promote fair and competitive play across the tennis world.

All players, regardless of age, gender, geography, or skill level, are rated on the same scale between 1.00 and 16.50 based on actual match results.

The brainchild of tennis professionals who wanted to prevent lopsided matches, UTR Sports had humble beginnings in the mid-2000s to launch a tennis rating.

UTR Sports partners and investors include Novak Djokovic, Team8, Tennis Channel, Amazon Prime Video, Tennis Australia, and many more.

As the concept expanded, UTR Sports realized that by building a system that would stop unbalanced matches, they were actually developing something more powerful: a truly global rating system, capable of accurately rating players based upon their actual match results—regardless of if they were recreational players or professionals.

The UTR Rating is the gold-standard rating for college tennis and is used for recruiting by almost all college coaches in the U.S.

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