Emma Raducanu has decided to move away from the traditional events to kick off her tennis season as she will feature in a team competition at the start of her 2026 WTA Tour campaign.<\/p>\n
The 2021 US Open winner has decided to join forces with Jack Draper to represent Great Britain at the season-opening United Cup, which will be staged in Sydney and Perth from January 2-11.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m honoured to be able to make my United Cup debut in January,\u201d Raducanu<\/a> said. \u201cBeing able to play for Team GB with my team-mates is a unique opportunity and week to enjoy. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s great to be able to experience a new format on the tour, represent my country and spend a couple extra weeks in Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n It is a change in strategy from the 22-year-old as she opted to start her season in New Zealand the past three years, as she signed up for the ASB Classic in Auckland \u2013 although she was a last-minute withdrawal ahead of her first match in January this year \u2013 while in 2022 she played at the Sydney International.<\/p>\n Draper<\/a> will also make his debut at the United Cup as he played at the Adelaide International in 2023 and 2024 while he kicked off his 2025 campaign at the Australian Open.<\/p>\n \u201cI am excited to get back on court and compete in the United Cup. I\u2019ll be looking out for the draw to see if Team GB will play in Perth or Sydney,\u201d Draper said. \u201cI haven\u2019t been to either so it will be nice to compete in a brand new city in Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n Both Raducanu and Draper were forced to end their seasons early as the latter has been out of action since September as he brought the curtain down on his campaign after the US Open due to an arm injury.<\/p>\n Raducanu, meanwhile, played four events on the Asia swing but then withdrew from her final two tournaments<\/a> of the year due to health reasons.<\/p>\n Emma Raducanu on the brink of achieving her rankings goal \u2013 what comes next?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Emma Raducanu \u2018looks like a top-20 player and a top-10 challenger\u2019, says leading tennis voice<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n The 2026 United Cup will be the fourth edition of the tournament that features mixed-gender teams from 18 countries with the United States winning the inaugural campaign in 2023 and the 2025 tournament while Germany won in 2024.<\/p>\n The tournament consists of six groups with three countries and the teams phase each other in a round-robin format, featuring one men\u2019s and one women\u2019s singles amtch, and a mixed doubles match.<\/p>\n Teams are made up of six players \u2013 two ATP singles players, two WTA singles players, one ATP doubles player and one WTA doubles player.<\/p>\n Raducanu and Draper\u2019s team-mates are still to be confirmed, but the Great Britain team were represented by Billie Harris, Jan Choinski, Katie Boulter, Lily Miyazaki, Charles Broom and Olivia Nicholls in 2025.<\/p>\n Team GB topped their group this year to reach the quarter-final, but then lost against Poland.<\/p>\n Other big-name players who have already signed up for the 2026 edition are Iga Swiatek and Hubert Hurkacz for Poland while Alex de Minaur and Maya Joint will represent hosts Australia.<\/p>\n The post Emma Raducanu\u2019s first tournament of 2026 tennis season confirmed<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Emma Raducanu has decided to move away from the traditional events to kick off her tennis season as she will feature in a team competition at the start of her 2026 WTA Tour campaign. The 2021 US Open winner has decided to join forces with Jack Draper to represent Great Britain at the season-opening United […]<\/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-1250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250","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=1250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Tennis News<\/h2>\n