Emma Raducanu lost to Liudmila Samsonova at the City Open.

Emma Raducanu, was playing in qualifying for the City Open - a WTA Tour event in Oklahoma City. The Romanian youngster had beaten American world number 575 Madison Brengle in the first round of qualifying on Tuesday. But she was no match for Liudmila Samsonova, who is ranked 162 in the world.

The City Open is a Tier III event on the WTA Tour and features a $170,000 prize fund. Raducanu seemed to be affected by a delay to the start of her match against Samsonova, which got underway just before 11pm local time. Additionally, she was still recovering from blisters sustained during her three-hour match against Camila Osorio earlier in the week.

The City Open saw another early exit for Emma Raducanu, who lost in straight sets to Liudmila Samsonova. This marks Raducanu’s second loss in the tournament, and she will now be exiting early.

Fans rallied behind her and urged her to keep fighting but it was not to be as Samsonova secured the victory. “I’m very disappointed with my performance today,” Raducanu said afterwards. “I didn’t play my best tennis and I made too many mistakes. I’ll have to go back to the drawing board and work on my game”.

It was a tough loss for Raducanu, who was the top seed at the City Open. She had been in good form leading up to the tournament, winning her last two matches in straight sets. But she was unable to find her rhythm against Samsonova and made too many unforced errors.

The loss means that Raducanu will drop out of the top 100 in the world rankings. She will need to work hard to get back to her previous ranking of 60th. But she is still young and has time to improve her game and move back up the rankings.

Against Samsonova, Raducanu lost 6-3, 6-1. She’ll now be turning her attention to the next tournament on her schedule.