Emma Raducanu will carry Great Britain’s hopes at the United Cup in Australia, now the team’s highest-ranked singles player following Jack Draper’s withdrawal.
Draper and Raducanu were due to spearhead Team GB’s at the season-opening tournament in Australia, but they suffered a massive blow when the former announced that it “doesn’t seem like a smart decision right now” to compete following a lengthy spell on the sidelines with an arm injury.
Following a brilliant first half of the season that saw him climb to a career-high No 4 in the ATP Rankings, the 24-year-old struggled with injury during the second half of the campaign as he played one completed match at Wimbledon before retiring from his second-round clash against Sebastian Baez.
Draper then returned at the US Open and, after playing in the mixed doubles, he went on to win his singles opener at the season-ending hard-court Grand Slam before withdrawing due to injury.
That was his last match of the 2025 season, but he was confident he would kick off his 2026 campaign at the United Cup with Great Britain before competing at the Australian Open.
However, that won’t be the case as he won’t travel to Australia at all, saying “I’ve had this injury for a long time, I’m at the very, very end stages of the process and to step back on court into best-of-five-set tennis so soon just doesn’t seem like a smart decision right now for me and my tennis”.
Draper, currently No 10 in the ATP Rankings, was due to be Great Britain’s leading player alongside world No 29 Raducanu, but the latter will now carry the hopes.
United Cup squads consist of six members, two ATP singles players, two WTA singles player, one ATP doubles player and one WTA doubles player, but it will be a new-look GB team that play in Australia to the one that was originally announced.
Besides Draper and Raducanu, the other members of the squad were world No 126 Billie Harris (singles), world No 244 Mingge Xu (singles), world No 1 Glasspool (doubles) and world No 26 Olivia Nicholls (doubles).
Xu and Glasspool have also withdrawn and they have been replaced by world No 276 Katie Swann (singles) and world No 9 Neal Skupski (doubles).
No official replacement has been confirmed for Draper, but Harris will now be the No 1 singles player and he will take on Shintaro Mochizuk when Great Britain faces Japan in their opening tie on January 4.
