Emma Raducanu will miss the US Open, ruling the 2021 champion out of a second consecutive Grand Slam and closing the door on a return before the end of the North American hard-court swing. The 23-year-old is dealing with a stress fracture in her lower right leg, the injury that forced her out of Wimbledon on the eve of her first-round match.
Further examination classified it as a grade-four fracture of the shin, with medical guidance putting recovery at eight to 16 weeks. Measured from the grass-court season, that timeline leaves no realistic path to Flushing Meadows, where the singles main draw begins Aug. 30.
The decision follows a consultation with her medical team and formalizes what had looked increasingly likely for weeks. Raducanu had already pulled out of the Canadian Open in Toronto, and she was never listed for the Cincinnati Open. She has been rehabilitating at a training base in Switzerland, and video posted in recent days showed her serving from a standing position with a protective boot still fitted over her right leg.
Her last competitive match was the Queen’s Club final in June, a loss to Donna Vekic that nonetheless stood as her deepest run at any event since the 2021 US Open. It was also the week that broke her. The effort required to reach that final aggravated a problem she had been managing, and a scan on the eve of Wimbledon returned the fracture that has defined her summer.
The competitive cost is straightforward. Raducanu reached the third round at Flushing Meadows a year ago, her best showing there since the title run, and she cannot defend those points. She entered this week ranked No. 49 and will slide, with a drop toward the fringes of the top 90 plausible by the time the season’s final swing begins. That would carry consequences well beyond seeding, potentially affecting direct entry into the larger events that shape the early 2027 calendar.
The broader pattern is harder to read. A foot problem disrupted her preseason. A post-viral illness picked up in early February kept her off the tour for more than two months, and she returned in May to consecutive first-round losses before the Queen’s breakthrough arrived without warning. Her 2026 Grand Slam record now closes at three matches played and one win.
What makes the season particularly frustrating is that the structure around her had finally settled. Raducanu reunited this year with Andrew Richardson, the coach who guided her through qualifying and seven main-draw wins in New York five years ago, a partnership built on familiarity rather than reinvention. The two have had almost no uninterrupted court time together. Whatever the arrangement is capable of producing remains untested.
She was also left out of Great Britain’s squad for the Billie Jean King Cup Finals in China in late September, an omission that raises a question nobody around her has yet answered publicly: whether she competes again in 2026 at all. No return date has been set, and none is likely to be until the bone shows it can tolerate load.
For the tournament, the loss is one of narrative rather than competitive depth. Raducanu has not been a title threat in New York since the night she became the first qualifier in the Open era to win a major without dropping a set, but she remains one of the few players whose presence on Arthur Ashe Stadium requires no explanation to a casual audience. Five years on, the 2021 final is still the story the US Open reaches for when it wants to explain what the tournament can do to a career.
Her absence also thins an already reshaped women’s field. Victoria Mboko, Hailey Baptiste and Varvara Gracheva were among those missing when the entry list was published last month, and Ajla Tomljanovic has since ended her season. Aryna Sabalenka arrives chasing a third straight title in New York, with Coco Gauff, Iga Swiatek and Naomi Osaka the other former champions in the draw.
Eight main-draw wild cards remain unallocated, and the list of players still waiting on one will now be worked through without a name that would once have been at the top of it. Raducanu’s place in the field passes to the next player on the entry list, an administrative footnote to a summer that has cost her far more than a fortnight in Queens.
