What has gone wrong for Emma Raducanu since record-breaking US Open win?

Emma Raducanu collapsed to her knees in joy as she ended Britain’s 44-year wait for a winner of a women’s tennis Grand Slam six years ago.

That 2021 US Open win only looked like the start for the then 18-year-old as she went on to sign multi-million pound sponsorship deals with the likes of Nike, Porsche, Tiffany and Co, Dior plus many more.

However, the 23-year-old hasn’t been able to replicate her form from 2021, making just two finals since, with some suggesting that the youngster now focuses more on her sponsorship deals than her tennis career.

She has also only made it to the second week of a Grand Slam in one season and now faces a situation where she had just eight sponsorship deals remaining in April 2025.

That didn’t stop the British No.1 from ditching Nike to sign a brand new £3.2million deal with emerging tennis clothing brand Uniqlo in February 2026, but has been ruled out of the US Open with a stress fracture just two weeks before the tournament starts.

What has gone wrong for Emma Raducanu?

Injuries seem to have caused the majority of Raducanu’s issues but if you combine that with the fact that she has worked with nine different coaches in that time, perhaps it’s understandable why the star has lacked consistency on the big stage.

Everyone understands that injuries can be tough for any sports star especially when they come as frequently as they have for Raducanu, but when her entire career has lacked consistent playing time surely it would benefit her to find stability and support elsewhere.

In the first final that she made since her biggest success six years ago, Raducanu was defeated in straight sets by Sorana Cirstea at Cluj-Napoca in 2026, the match lasting just 64 minutes.

That came despite the Brit, who claims Romanian heritage, looking like she was working back towards her best in front of a crowd that supported her.

Nobody seems to really know what went wrong for her on that day as she looked flat, lacked energy and never really recovered despite victory feeling destined throughout the tournament.

She did follow that up by reaching the Queen’s final in June 2026, but was once again beaten in straight sets by Croatia’s Donna Vekic and hasn’t been seen on court since.

So, does Raducanu’s biggest issue lie in failing to maintain the conditioning levels required to reach the levels she needs to in between coaches and injuries?

Everybody knows how tough repetitive injury can be for any sports star, but injury also comes as part and parcel of their job and everybody has hard times that they must overcome.

How many injuries has Emma Raducanu actually had?

Already this year, Raducanu was ruled out of the 2026 Wimbledon tournament, as she missed the chance to compete in her home Grand Slam due to the same stress fracture that has ruled her out of the upcoming US Open.

Raducanu said that the fracture came in her right leg after she had been ‘managing a series of small issues,’ in the leadup and throughout HSBC Queen’s and now has now pulled out of the US Open just hours after she planned to play through a ‘lower leg niggle.’

However, the injuries had started even before her US Open win as Raducanu was forced to withdraw from Wimbledon in 2021, due to breathing difficulties in her fourth round match against Ajla Tomljanović.

She was then forced to retire in just her eighth match following that historic victory, when she withdrew from the first round of a tournament in the Czech Republic.

Her injury plagued 2022 season was then ended early due to a wrist injury in October, following three more retirements throughout that campaign.

Raducanu’s biggest setback came in 2023 when she missed eight months of tennis and three Grand Slams after surgery on her ankle, and both wrists kept her out from May of that year.

That also coincided with a time when the London native admitted to be struggling mentally with the pressure and expectation as she fell to a world ranking of 133, despite reaching as high as tenth following her maiden victory, and also went as far as admitting that sometimes she wishes she hadn’t won the US Open at all.

But, she did start making her way back throughout 2024 as she started to climb the rankings from as low as 303rd and gave herself a ‘pat on the back,’ as she managed to rise back into the top 60, despite competing in just 15 events that year and it seemed like she had finally started to manage her workload effectively.

That season still wasn’t smooth sailing, as she was eliminated in the first round of both the US Open and the Madrid Open, as well as pulling out of Mixed Doubles with Andy Murray at what was the Scot's Wimbledon farewell.

Although things weren’t looking up for long as her 2025 season ended early once again due to illness.

How has Emma Raducanu tried to fix it?

Despite all the setbacks, Raducanu has shown flashes that there is a quality tennis player somewhere, especially in that 2024 season where she made one semi-final and four quarter-finals.

One of those quarter-finals included a defeat to then World No.1 Iga Świątek at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart.

The main thing that Raducanu has tried to do is manage her workload specifically around time on court through the tournaments that she picks, and managing the demands of modern day sport.

Injury expert Stephen Smith spoke to Tennis365 and said: “That’s one of the challenges that we’re now seeing with the global calendar within tennis, it’s the requirements in terms of the number of tournaments that they need to be involved in, it makes that even harder.

“So I think for her, what she’d like to do is, keep building in blocks of development work to ensure that she has that base, and she’s getting enough recovery to be able to adapt to the demands of a formalised professional career.”

That would be a career built on success and getting back to her best as she now reaches the World No.25 spot.

Raducanu spoke on her preparation for this season back in January and said: “I spent the majority of my pre-season in the gym, on the physio bed, doing rehab, prehab, everything but actually playing tennis.

“For me, the most important thing is that I feel like I’m building, I’m building the fitness, building the strength, I know my level is there, I just need to get the reps in.”

What comes next for Emma Raducanu?

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to have worked entirely in the way that the Brit would have wanted as she now looks likely to end what once looked like a promising 2026 season early.

However, looking ahead to next season, she has been working with Andrew Richardson since May, the coach that helped her win the 2021 US Open and already helped her reach the Queen’s final in June.

As much as the work was brought to an end by this stress fracture it just feels as though Raducanu just to find some consistency both on court in terms of her playing time and off court with her background and then she can get back to her best.

At just 23 years old, there is still plenty of time for Raducanu to revive her career if she can leave those injury woes behind, but that is often easier said than done in elite sport.