Emma Raducanu will face Zhu Lin in the first round of the Ningbo Open and if she gets past the Chinese veteran, she will have to navigate a nightmare path.<\/p>\n
There had been doubts over Raducanu\u2019s participation in the WTA 500 event following her retirement from her opening match at the Wuhan Open last year with a recent social media post<\/a> suggesting she was still receiving medical treatment just days before the Ningbo event.<\/p>\n But the British No 1 has made her way to China\u2019s northeastern Zhejiang province and her name remained in the main draw, giving her a chance to earn some crucial ranking points in the coming week.<\/p>\n The 22-year-old doesn\u2019t have any points to defend in the last few months of the season and a good run in Ningbo will see her rise further up the rankings following her recent climb to No 29.<\/p>\n And Raducanu<\/a> has landed in the top half of the draw with the 31-year-old Zhu \u2013 a former world No 38, who currently sits at No 230 in the WTA Rankings \u2013 her first opponent.<\/p>\n If she gets the better of Zhu, she will face top seed and current world No 5 Mirra Andreeva<\/a> \u2013 who has a first-round bye \u2013 in the round of 16 in what will be their first-ever career meeting.<\/p>\n The winner of round of 16 encounter will face one of 2023 Wimbledon winner Marketa Vondrousova\/Karolina Muchova\/seventh seed Diana Schaider\/wildcard Wang Xinyu in the quarter-final.<\/p>\n Fourth seed Ekaterina Alexandrova is the second-highest seed in the top half and she is projected to make the semi-final, although she will likely have to get past eighth seed Luidila Samsonova in the last eight.<\/p>\n Aryna Sabalenka and Jasmine Paolini reveal an alternative view on extended WTA 1000 events<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Meet China\u2019s \u2018Mr Stringer\u2019 as he reveals Aryna Sabalenka has a very special request<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Jasmine Paolini \u2013 who beat Iga Swiatek in the quarter-final of the Wuhan Open before losing against Coco Gauff in the last four \u2013 is the second seed and highlights the bottom half of the draw.<\/p>\n The Italian faces either Veronika Kudermetova or Shuai Zhang in the second round before a projected meeting against sixth seed Belinda Bencic in the quarter-final.<\/p>\n Paolini and third seed Elena Rybakina are the favourites to reach the semi-final, but the latter has a tricky path as she faces the winner of the Victoria Mboko and Dayana Yastremska first up before a possible meeting against seventh seed Clara Tauson.<\/p>\n The tournament has suffered several high-profile withdrawals as world No 4 Amanda Anisimova was due to be the top seed, but she is still struggling with a calf injury while defending champion Daria Kasatkina is also out due to injury.<\/p>\n Jessica Pegula was also initially in the draw, but she withdrew after her place in the season-ending WTA Finals<\/a> was confirmed with her run to the semi-final of the Wuhan Open.<\/p>\n The post Ningbo Open draw: Emma Raducanu faces world No 230, but path will get trickier<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Emma Raducanu will face Zhu Lin in the first round of the Ningbo Open and if she gets past the Chinese veteran, she will have to navigate a nightmare path. There had been doubts over Raducanu\u2019s participation in the WTA 500 event following her retirement from her opening match at the Wuhan Open last year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}WTA Features<\/h2>\n