Emma Raducanu will return to tennis at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells | Emma Raducanu
US Open champion Emma Raducanu will return to the BNP Paribas Open tennis tour in Indian Wells next week.
Raducanu was mulling over where to make her first appearance since her stunning US Open victory and news broke on Tuesday night that the 18-year-old Briton was given a wild card for the prestigious event.
The California tournament, which starts next Wednesday and is one of the biggest on the WTA Tour, is normally held in March but has been postponed due to the pandemic.
While Raducanu’s ranking of 22 is comfortably high enough to guarantee entry into all of the biggest events, the deadline is several weeks before the start of each tournament, meaning she needed a wildcard to avoid having to go through qualifications.
Raducanu will be one of the top California desert attractions and there’s bound to be a huge amount of attention on how she fares after sweeping everything in front of her in Flushing Meadows.
The teenager said last week that she would not seek to advance to the WTA season-end finals, but she also competed in the Kremlin Cup in Moscow and the Transylvanian Open in Romania later in October.
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Raducanu, who attended the James Bond film No Time To Die premiere on Tuesday, sits 14th in the race to reach the event in Guadalajara, expected to rack up nearly 400 points to place in the top eight.