{"id":400593,"date":"2025-09-05T18:04:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T18:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/400593\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T18:04:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T18:04:10","slug":"emma-raducanu-british-number-one-withdraws-from-billie-jean-king-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/400593\/","title":{"rendered":"Emma Raducanu: British number one withdraws from Billie Jean King Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"

British number one Emma Raducanu has withdrawn from the Great Britain team for this month’s Billie Jean King Cup Finals so she can play on the WTA Tour instead.<\/b><\/p>\n

Raducanu has been offered a wildcard for the Korea Open in Seoul and has decided to prioritise that tournament over playing for her country in the eight-team finals in Shenzhen, China.<\/p>\n

The 22-year-old believes playing on the tour will be better for the long-term development of her game and her fledgling partnership with new coach Francisco Roig.<\/p>\n

Roig started working on a trial basis with Raducanu in Cincinnati last month and was also in New York, where she reached the third round of the US Open.<\/p>\n

Raducanu also missed the Billie Jean King Cup qualifying round in The Hague in April so she could train with her then-coach Mark Petchey in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

The decision is a major blow to Britain’s chance of success in Shenzhen, as Raducanu won all three of her singles matches when GB reached the semi-finals of the competition<\/a> in Malaga last year.<\/p>\n

Compatriots Katie Boulter, Sonay Kartal and Jodie Burrage are the three remaining members of the team, although captain Anne Keothavong is able to bring in two more players.<\/p>\n

The world number 89 Fran Jones is very likely to be added to the team, which will first play Japan in a quarter-final tie on 18 September.<\/p>\n

Ironically, the International Tennis Federation brought the date of the finals forward by two months to try and attract more of the top players to play.<\/p>\n

The thinking was that players were more likely to play in the Finals in Shenzhen at the start of a run of tournaments in Asia rather than return to China in November once the regular season is over.<\/p>\n

Raducanu will have ranking points to defend in Seoul, having reached the quarter-finals last year. But the world number 36 already has a good chance of being among the 32 seeds for January’s Australian Open, as she has no other points to defend this year.<\/p>\n

The Wimbledon champion Iga Swiatek and the US Open finalist Amanda Anisimova are among the players on the entry list for the Korea Open, which begins on 15 September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British number one Emma Raducanu has withdrawn from the Great Britain team for this month’s Billie Jean King…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-400593","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115153014979357139","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}