EMMA RADUCANU'S French Open preparations suffered a setback as she was forced to retire from her first-round match at the Internazionali BNL D’Italia.
A niggling back issue, which hampered her at the Madrid Open last week, once again put paid to her chances as she struggled through 11 games against Bianca Andreescu.
The British number one was 6-2 2-1 down when she left the court in Rome, telling a physio: “I can’t move.”
A one-sided first set saw Raducanu have no answer to Andreescu’s power while struggling to make her own serve count.
Raducanu spent some time off the court for treatment and she was clearly uncomfortable when play got back under way.
Andreescu, like Raducanu born in Canada with Romanian heritage and a US Open winner, is herself building back up to full fitness after a knee injury,
Now Raducanu, currently without a full-time coach following her split from Torben Beltz, will be hoping to return to full fitness by the time the French Open gets under way at Roland Garros in under a fortnight’s time.
In the men’s draw, Novak Djokovic stormed into the third round as he aims to retain his place at the top of the men’s rankings.
A 6-3 6-2 victory over Aslan Karatsev saw Djokovic advance, knowing he needs to reach the semi-finals to remain world number one having missed several tournaments due to his coronavirus vaccination status.
There was also a win for British ninth seed Cameron Norrie, who beat wildcard Luca Nardi 6-4 6-4 to set-up a third-round clash with Marin Cilic.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here