Emma Raducanu’s preparation for the US Open has taken another blow after the former champion withdrew from next month’s WTA 1000 in Toronto, a decision that all but ensures she will arrive at Flushing Meadows short of competitive tennis and, as things stand, unseeded.
Raducanu has not played a match since losing the Queen’s Club final to Donna Vekic in June — a breakthrough run to her first WTA 500 final that ended in cruel fashion when a lower-leg “niggle” was found, on the eve of Wimbledon, to have developed into a stress fracture. Telegraph Sport has reported the injury as a grade-four stress fracture in her right shin, the most serious classification and one that indicates a visible fracture line on an MRI scan. She was pictured on crutches and in a protective boot in the days after pulling out of the All England Club.
Tennis Canada has now confirmed that Raducanu is no longer in the main draw for the National Bank Open in Toronto, which runs from 2 to 13 August, with Germany’s Eva Lys promoted into the field in her place. The 23-year-old had already been left off the entry list for the Washington Open in late July — the WTA 500 event she reached the semi-finals of a year ago — meaning the North American hard-court swing that would normally sharpen her game before New York is disappearing week by week.
That leaves the Cincinnati Open (13–23 August) and, failing that, Monterrey (from 23 August) as her remaining routes back before the year’s final Grand Slam, which begins on 30 August. Recovery from a stress fracture of this kind can take anywhere from six to eight weeks, and Telegraph Sport reports that Raducanu is doing everything she can to accelerate the process. Even so, a return date has not been set, and no player relishes the prospect of a Grand Slam being their first match back off a bone injury.
The ranking consequences are already biting. Unable to defend the points from last year’s run to the Wimbledon third round, Raducanu has slipped five places to world No. 38 — leaving her, for now, outside the top-32 seeding cut-off for the US Open. By skipping Washington and Toronto she forfeits any realistic chance of climbing back into that bracket before the New York seedings are finalised, and stands to shed further ground still. The upshot is stark: unless she plays and wins in Cincinnati, she is on course to be drawn unseeded in New York, exposing her to a potential early meeting with a top-four name.
The wider picture is a familiar one for Raducanu, whose career since her fairytale 2021 US Open title has been repeatedly interrupted by fitness problems, including surgeries on both wrists and an ankle in 2023. This year had offered genuine encouragement — two finals, a level not seen since her Flushing Meadows triumph, and a grass-court surge that had many tipping her for a deep Wimbledon run. She had managed only 17 matches all season before Queen’s, however, where a demanding closing weekend of three matches in 28 hours appears to have tipped a managed complaint into a fracture.
In the statement confirming her Wimbledon withdrawal, Raducanu said she had done everything possible to reach the start line before being “medically advised to stop pushing through.” Those words now frame a summer defined by absence rather than opportunity.
For a player who tends to feed off rhythm and confidence, the danger is less the ranking slide than the lack of match sharpness. Should she make it to New York, she could do so having not struck a competitive ball in more than two months — a scenario that turns even a favourable-looking draw into a stern examination. The US Open has always been Raducanu’s stage. This time, simply getting there in shape to compete is the challenge.
