The 2025 season was marked by ups and downs for Emma Raducanu, culminating in an early end to her season. Fast forward to the current season, her struggles have continued as she walked away with a second-round defeat against Austria’s Anastasia Potapova, 7-6(3), 6-2 in Melbourne Park. However, following the defeat, the Brit was quite frank about her performance.

“Yeah, I would say so, I think I want to be playing a different way. And I think the misalignment with how I’m playing right now and how I want to be playing is something that I just want to work on,” Raducanu said during her post-match press conference.

“I think there are definitely pockets of me playing how I want to play, and it comes out in flashes, which is a positive, and maybe more than certain times in my career in the last few years.”

Throughout her tennis career, Raducanu has gone through a lot of changes. Multiple coaches, adjusting to the pressure of tennis scheduling, injuries, and more. But there was also optimism as Raducanu brought on Francisco Roig, the man who coached Rafael Nadal to 22 Grand Slams, ahead of the 2025 Cincinnati Open.

She also played some solid tennis last year, remaining injury-free for the longest time since her 2021 US Open triumph. While she has yet to hit those heights again, Raducanu showed flashes of brilliance at the Washington Open and Miami Open, though she was unable to make deep runs at any Slams.

But heading into 2026, her injury woes kicked right back up as a bruised foot ended her 2025 season early and kept her off the courts till late December, hampering her prep for Australia.

“If you would have told me I would have played four or five matches in Australia, regardless of how they went, from a physical perspective it would have been pretty surprising,” Raducanu said earlier this month.

“But it’s not how I want to be, like, consistently every day. So it’s not going to fall into place straight away, but the more I work on how I want to be playing, it will be more of my identity every time I step onto the court. So yeah, I need to work at that, but it’s not going to happen overnight,” she said. However, coming to the Australian Open, there was another issue that the Brit pointed out.

Emma Raducanu confronts the tennis scheduling

“I think that’s a challenge,” Emma Raducanu once said about the tennis scheduling. However, right before the 2026 Australian Open, her opinions regarding the schedule had shifted somewhat.

Raducanu arrived on Friday in Melbourne following a quarterfinal run at the Hobart International. At 9 pm on Saturday, she had her practice session, and for Sunday, she was locked in against Thailand’s Mananchaya Sawangkaew.

“It’s very difficult. You would love to have more time in the environment, more time practicing, but I guess I was pretty much handed the schedule to try and turn it around and make the most out of what is in front of me,” she said.

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Furthermore, she added, “I think it’s easy to get down and complain about it, but it’s not going to help. So I’m just trying to focus and turn it around for tomorrow.” Looking at the results, the Brit defeated the Thai player in straight sets, 6-4, 6-1.

However, she fell in the second-round against Anastasia Potapova, ultimately ending her Grand Slam hopes.