Emma Raducanu kicked off her clay-court season in impressive fashion as she defeated Suzan Lamens in the opening round of the 2025 Madrid Open.<\/p>\n
The 2021 US Open winner prevailed 7-6(4), 6-4 against her 25-year-old Dutch opponent in just under two hours.<\/p>\n
Raducanu<\/a>\u00a0fought back from a break down in each set to survive a stern test from Lamens, who is ranked 73rd in the world.<\/p>\n It was Raducanu\u2019s first match since her excellent run at the Miami Open ended with a quarter-final defeat to Jessica Pegula just under a month ago.<\/p>\n Prior to Madrid, Raducanu chose to delay the start of her clay campaign\u00a0as she withdrew from Great Britain\u2019s Billie Jean King Cup qualifying ties in the Netherlands and the WTA 250 tournament in Rouen.<\/p>\n The Brit\u2019s victory against Lamens was her first win on an outdoor clay-court in almost three years, with her previous one coming at\u00a0the 2022 French Open.<\/p>\n Raducanu has not played the French Open or Italian Open since 2022, with her only outdoor clay appearance in the previous two seasons coming at the 2024 Madrid Open \u2014 where she exited in the first round.<\/p>\n \u201cI know I had to play really well to win and although it wasn\u2019t always my best, I got stuck in at the right moments,\u201d Raducanu said in a post-match interview.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m proud of how I competed. It is a strength of mine when I can use it.\u201d<\/p>\n With the 35 points earned from her opening round win at the WTA 1000 tournament, Raducanu has climbed two places from 49th to 47th in the Live WTA Rankings.<\/p>\n This boosts Raducanu\u2019s points tally by 25 points up to 1,139 as she was defending 10 points from her first round loss in Madrid last year.<\/p>\n Emma Raducanu hits out at \u2018judgement\u2019 she faces and breaks her silence on next coaching appointment<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Sabalenka\u2019s quest, Swiatek & Gauff\u2019s struggles, Raducanu\u2019s rankings chance \u2013 Madrid Open predictions<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n The former world No 10 has a good opportunity to climb the rankings further in the coming weeks as she has no other points to defend during the clay season.<\/p>\n Raducanu\u2019s serve caused her problems during her difficult early season run prior to Miami, but there were positives to take in this area from her Madrid opener.<\/p>\n The 22-year-old landed 61% of her first serves and hit four aces against Lamens.<\/p>\n While her 56% of first serve points won was on the low side, Raducanu won an excellent 66% of points behind her second delivery and hit only one double fault.<\/p>\n Raducanu will play 24th seed Marta Kostyuk in the second round in Madrid.<\/p>\n The Brit holds a 1-1 record against the 22-year-old Ukrainian, who she dismantled 6-2, 6-1 at the 2022 Madrid Open in the pair\u2019s previous meeting.<\/p>\n READ NEXT:\u00a0Sabalenka, Swiatek, Gauff, Pegula \u2013 which WTA stars are defending the most points at the Madrid Open?<\/a> The post Emma Raducanu ends three-year clay drought at\u00a0Madrid Open as encouraging stats emerge<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Emma Raducanu kicked off her clay-court season in impressive fashion as she defeated Suzan Lamens in the opening round of the 2025 Madrid Open. The 2021 US Open winner prevailed 7-6(4), 6-4 against her 25-year-old Dutch opponent in just under two hours. Raducanu\u00a0fought back from a break down in each set to survive a stern […]<\/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-346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346","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=346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Emma Raducanu News<\/h2>\n
Encouraging serving stats<\/h4>\n
Who will Raducanu face next?<\/h4>\n
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