By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Wednesday August 31, 2022

Flushing Meadows, NY—Emma Raducanu’s US Open title defense was over practically before it started, but the British star is trying to take some positives from a tough experience.



The silver lining? The blank slate.

“I mean, in a way happy because it's a clean slate,” she said. “I'm going to drop down the rankings. Climb my way back up.”

Raducanu, who drops to 13-16 on the season, says she’s looking forward to a bit of a pressure drop now that her Grand Slam season has come to a close. She’s slated to pop down to 81 in the rankings after the US Open. She’ll now have trouble qualifying for some tournaments by ranking alone. The cutoffs for the 100-level tournaments are usually much higher.

By losing to Alize Cornet on Day 2, she became the first defending champ to lose in the first match of her US Open title defense since 2017, and just the fourth in Open Era history.

The difficult experience will give Raducanu another shot to prove herself and her ability to rise back up the ranking. She seems to enjoy her work with coach Dmitry Tursunov (recently hired on a trial basis) and could benefit from continuing work with him.

“In a way the target will be off my back slightly,” she said. “I just have another chance to claw my way back up there. I've been doing some really good work in the last six weeks especially. Just looking forward to kind of putting more of those weeks together consistently, then we'll see what happens.”