Emma Raducanu has arrived in Australia for the start of the 2026 season and she will instantly have a chance to make a leap up the WTA Rankings.
Raducanu was forced to pull out of her first event of last year due to injury, so she has no ranking points to defend between now and the Australian Open.
She will kick-start her year by representing Great Britain in the United Cup and even though this is a team event, ranking points are up for grabs.
2021 US Open champion Raducanu is due to play four-time Grand Slam winner Naomi Osaka in her opening match of the year as Britain takes on Japan in Perth and if she wins that match, it would be worth 32 ranking points.
Her second match is due to be against Greece’s Maria Sakkari and if she secures victories in both of her group stage matches, it would be worth 90 ranking points.
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If a Great Britain team that now has Billy Harris taking centre stage after Jack Draper pulled out with injury reaches the knock-out stages, Raducanu will get 60 ranking points for every quarter-final or semi-final victory.
In the unlikely scenario that a British side weakened by Draper’s absence wins the United Cup and Raducanu wins all five of her matches, she would pick up a bumper harvest of 500 ranking points.
That dream win scenario would fire her up from her current ranking position of No 29 to and into the top 20 of the WTA Rankings, but a more likely outcome could be a couple of group stage wins that would still give her a healthy rankings boost ahead of the Australian Open.
Wins against Osaka and Sakkari would fire her up two of three places in the rankings and those ranking points would be useful heading into the Australian Open, where she will have 130 points to defend following her run to the third round last year.
She is also expected to play in the WTA Tour event in Hobart a week before the Australian Open and that would be another chance to collect fresh ranking points in a week when she will not have anything to defend from 2025.
If she fails to pick up points at the United Cup and then goes out in the first round in Hobart and at the Australian Open, Raducanu’s ranking is likely to slide outside the top 32, which would mean she has ground to make up in her efforts to be seeded for the second Grand Slam of the year at Roland Garros in June.
Full teams for 2026 United Cup:
1) United States: Taylor Fritz, Coco Gauff, Mackenzie McDonald, Varvara Lepchenko, Christian Harrison, Nicole Melichar-Martinez (Captain: Michael Russell)
2) Canada: Felix Auger-Aliassime, Victoria Mboko, Alexis Galarneau, Kayla Cross, Cleeve Harper, Ariana Arsenault (Captain: Gabriela Dabrowski)
3) Italy: Flavio Cobolli, Jasmine Paolini, Andrea Pellegrino, Nuria Brancaccio, Andrea Vavassori, Sara Errani (Captain: Stefano Cobolli)
4) Australia: Alex de Minaur, Maya Joint, Jason Kubler, Maddison Inglis, John-Patrick Smith, Storm Hunter (Captain: Lleyton Hewitt)
5) Great Britain: Billy Harris, Emma Raducanu, Neal Skupski, Katie Swan, Lloyd Glasspool, Olivia Nicholls (Captain: Tim Henman)
7) Belgium: Zizou Bergs, Elise Mertens, Kimmer Coppejans, Greet Minnen, Sander Gillé, Lara Salden (Captain: Christopher Heyman)
8) France: Arthur Rinderknech, Geoffrey Blancaneaux, Léolia Jeanjean, Édouard Roger-Vasselin, Tiantsoa Rakotomanga Rajaonah (Captain: Lucas Pouille)
9) Poland: Hubert Hurkacz, Iga Swiatek, Daniel Michalski, Katarzyna Kawa, Jan Zielinski, Katarzyna Piter (Captain: Mateusz Terczyński)
10) Spain: Jaume Munar, Jessica Bouzas Maneiro, Carlos Taberner, Andrea Lazaro García, Íñigo Cervantes, Yvonne Cavalle Reimers (Captain: Miguel Sanchez)
11) Czech Republic: Jakub Mensik, Barbora Krejcikova, Dalibor Svrcina, Linda Fruhvirtová, Adam Pavlasek, Miriam Skoch (Captain: Jiri Novak)
12) Greece: Stefanos Tsitsipas, Maria Sakarri, Stefanos Sakellaridis, Despina Papamichail, Petros Tsitsipas, Sapfo Sakellaridi (Captain: Petros Tsitsipas)
13) Japan: Shintaro Mochizuki, Naomi Osaka, Yasutaka Uchiyama, Nao Hibino (Captain: Go Soeda)
14) Argentina: Sebastian Baez, Solana Sierra, Marco Trungelliti, Maria Lourdes Carle, Guido Andreozzi, Nicole Fossa Huergo (Captain: Sebastian Gutierrez)
15) Netherlands: Tallon Griekspoor, Suzan Lamens, Guy den Ouden, Eva Vedder, David Pel, Demi Schuurs (Captain: Tallon Griekspoor)
16) Switzerland: Stan Wawrinka, Belinda Bencic, Jakub Paul, Luca Castelnuovo, Naima Karamoko (Captain: Stan Wawrinka)
17) Norway: Casper Ruud, Malene Helgo, Viktor Durasovic, Astrid Brune Olsen, Ulrikke Eikeri (Captain: Christian Ruud)
18) China: Zhizhen Zhang, Zhu Lin, Te Rigele, You Xiaodi, Wang Aoran (Captain: Wu Di)
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