Emma Raducanu continues rise up world rankings despite being targeted

Emma Raducanu has risen to No.30 in the world tennis rankings days after being caught up in a social media storm at the China Open. The British No. 1 has jumped two places in the list, moving above Dayana Yastremska despite losing to Jessica Pegula in the round-of-32 at the most recent tournament.

Raducanu ended up as the main target of a social media battle recently after Sonay Kartal defeated Mirra Andreeva at the China Open. The British tennis star stunned fans by beating the Russian, who was the heavy favourite and the fourth highest seed at the event. After this shock, the British Tennis Players On Tour X account wrote: "Sonay Kartal has now overtaken Katie Boulter to become the new British No. 2. There's no doubt she'll now be hunting down Emma Raducanu for that British Number One spot now."

Other X users weren't impressed with this wording, claiming that Raducanu was being unfairly targeted with these comments. One said: "So you cant celebrate Kartal's victory without bringing Emma Raducanu down. British people are so exhausting."

The page replied: "How is this bringing Emma down exactly? I'm saying how we have friendly competition between the Brits for that number one spot, which is a good thing!"

Raducanu is coming back from a pair of crushing defeats at the China and Korea Opens, where she threw away multiple match points in each tournament. With losses to Pegula and Barbora Krejcikova, the world No. 30 admitted she is dealing with an unknown feeling due to these unfortunate results.

Ahead of her tournament debut at the Wuhan Open, Raducanu said: "Yeah, I think it was hard for me. The last two matches that I lost, I had match points in both. And it's not something that's really happened to me before and then to happen twice in a week was pretty new to get my head around."

Reflecting on her plan for the upcoming tournament, she added: "I would say they're all different; different styles of play. I think I was doing things that I wasn't really doing in the first part of the year. I think I was also dealing with Jessie's ball pretty well compared to when we played in Miami.

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"I felt just a lot more confident and composed when I was playing her this time round, which was good for me. And I do feel like I'm improving and making progress. I still see the differences in where I want to go but I know I'm doing good work day to day to try and get there."