Emma Raducanu will continue to try to arrest her losing run against the best players in the world after taking another wildcard into the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships.
The former US Open champion is enduring the worst sequence of her career having lost four successive matches. Raducanu failed to capitalise on wildcard entries into tournaments in Abu Dhabi and Doha over the last two weeks, losing in the first round both times, to Marketa Vondrousova and Ekaterina Alexandrova.
Those losses followed another first-round defeat by Cristina Bucsa in Singapore and a hammering by Iga Swiatek after she had reached the third round of the Australian Open for the first time. Raducanu faces the prospect of another tough draw, with the top 10 all scheduled to play in Dubai.
But the 22-year-old, who will again be supported by her mentor Jane O’Donoghue and the fitness trainer Yutaka Nakamura after her coach Nick Cavaday stood down for health reasons, has opted once more to capitalise on her high profile and bypass qualifying.
Qualifying for the Dubai tournament began on Friday, with the main draw under way on Sunday. Jasmin Paolini is the defending champion, having kicked off a breakthrough 2024 with victory at the event last year.
Swiatek, meanwhile, the three-times defending champion at the Qatar Open, was bundled out of the tournament by Jelena Ostapenko 6-3, 6-1 in the semi-finals on Friday.
Ostapenko, now leads the five-times Grand Slam champion 5-0 in head to heads between the pair, and her victory set up a final showdown with American Amanda Anisimova.
Ostapenko, 27, whose sole major was the 2017 French Open and is currently ranked 37th in the world, got off to a confident start by winning the opening two games before taking a 4-2 lead en route to taking the first set. She produced an utterly dominant display in the second set to race to a 4-0 lead before wrapping up the win in just a little over an hour.
“I was pretty confident that I will win against her. We played a lot of matches and I know how to play her. I’m really happy with how I’m handling my emotions this week. Just so happy to be in the final,” Ostapenko said.
Ostapenko, who had said the partisan fans at the tournament were disrespectful for jeering her throughout her quarter-final match as she eased to a straight-sets win over Tunisian Ons Jabeur, celebrated her win over Swiatek by looking at the crowd.
Swiatek, the world No 2 Swiatek, threw her racket midway through the second set as her woes against the Latvian player continued.
In the second semi-final, Anisimova, the world No 41, stormed past Alexandrova 6-3, 6-3 in one hour and 30 minutes to reach her second WTA 1000 final.
In Florida Cameron Norrie’s run in the Delray Beach Open came to an end at the quarter-final stage when he was beaten 7-6(3), 7-5 by the third seed, Alex Michelsen. It was redemption for the American, who Norrie defeated in the round of 32 of the Dallas Open earlier this month.
The closely fought first set lasted 10 minutes shy of an hour, but Michelsen had the upper hand in the tie-break. It was a similarly even story to begin the second set before Norrie, leading 5-4, went up 40-0, but failed to take advantage of his break and set points and his opponent drew them back square. Norrie then lost his serve, allowing Michelsen to swiftly wrap up the match.
