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2013 Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli is still a believer that Emma Raducanu can return to the top-10 but highlighted that the 21-year-old "needs to do a lot of work" to make that happen.
Raducanu, who achieved a career-high ranking of No. 10 in 2022 July, is currently ranked at No. 262 in the world after just returning from three surgeries. After going 3-3 in her opening three tournaments of the year, Raducanu suffered a 0-6 6-7 (6) loss to Anhelina Kalinina in Doha on Monday - her first loss in the opening round since making a comeback.
After a very slow start and overall disappointing performance against Kalinina, Raducanu revealed she would skip next week's WTA 1000 event in Dubai and instead return to London to practice and analyze some things. Bartoli, a former world No. 7, thinks it's the right move as the French tennis legend thinks Raducanu and her team need to figure some things out and come up with a good plan for the remainder of the year.
Bartoli reacts to Raducanu's Doha exit
"I felt towards the end of the second set she was getting a little tired and they had two really long points when Emma was up 6-5 in the tie-break and you can see on the match point she was basically struggling physically, so it's all of that you have to take in," Bartoli told Sky Sports.
"A huge debrief has to be done with her team as to what's going on now that she's been able to play a few tournaments back to back and really come up with a plan because you can see some of the shots are still there.
"You can see that if she put it together she has absolutely the potential to come back in that top 10 but a lot of work needs to be done."
Unless Raducanu accepts to play in some lower-level tournaments, her next tournament could be Indian Wells in early March. Although Raducanu hasn't made the main draw cut for Indian Wells, she would most certainly receive a wildcard if she asked for one, as was the case last year.