Emma Raducanu misses rankings opportunity as she falls to battling Madrid Open loss
Yesterday at 12:58 PM
Emma Raducanu’s run at the 2025 Madrid Open is over after a three-set defeat to world No 36 Marta Kostyuk in the second round.
The British star fell 4-6, 6-2, 2-6 to the 22-year-old Ukrainian in a hard-fought contest on Court 4 at the WTA 1000 tournament.
Raducanu was broken in the opening game of the match before striking back to level at 3-3, but she lost serve for a second time in the seventh game as a competitive opening set slipped away.
The 2021 US Open champion responded superbly in the second set as she raced into a 2-0 lead, and while Kostyuk broke back in the third game, Raducanu broke twice more to take the set in decisive fashion.
In the decider, it was Kostyuk’s turn to react strongly to dropping a set by establishing a 2-0 advantage, but Raducanu drew level at two games apiece.
The Ukrainian was not to be denied, though, as she broke Raducanu’s serve at 2-2 and 4-2 en route to sealing victory after just over two hours and 10 minutes.
Raducanu had started her clay season with a 7-6(4), 6-4 victory over world No 73 Susan Lamens in the opening round in the Spanish capital.
The former world No 10 climbed from 49th to 47th in the Live WTA Rankings with the 35 points earned from her first round win, and she would have risen above 46th-ranked Lulu Sun had she progressed to the third round.
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Raducanu will remain on 1,139 points, and a deeper run in Madrid could have seen the Brit make a more significant rankings jump given she was defending only 10 points from last year’s Madrid Open — when she exited in the first round.
The 22-year-old should leave her first clay-court tournament in a year with plenty of positives, though, after a strong opening round win over Lamens and an encouraging performance against Kostyuk, who has been ranked as high as 16th in the world.
Prior to Madrid, Raducanu had not played since her impressive run to the Miami Open quarter-finals, having opted to pull out of Great Britain's Billie Jean King Cup qualifying ties in the Netherlands, as well as the WTA 250 tournament in Rouen.
Raducanu is next set to compete at the WTA 1000 tournament in Rome, where she has only played once before — in 2022.
She will have further opportunities to improve her ranking in the coming weeks as she is defending no points until the grass season, having ended her 2024 clay campaign early after Madrid.
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