Emma Raducanu Miami Open withdrawal followed by five others including Sonay Kartal and Maya Joint

It was a bit of a sudden mass withdrawal on Monday night at the Miami Open before play gets underway later today in Florida with five more players deciding not to play soon after Emma Raducanu withdrew from the tournament.

Raducanu withdrew on Monday citing lingering effects from a viral infection she suffered while in the Middle East. No luck at all for the former US Open champion who reached the third round last week at Indian Wells and also reached the Quarter-Finals of the Miami Open just last year.

But she will now lose those points and heading towards the clay court season will be in defending mode over gaining albeit with her signing up for Linz over playing Billie Jean King Cup, it is very much a sign that she plans to focus on ranking over anything else.

Ironically though when the draw came out, a top tie was in fact billed as her v Sonay Kartal potentially in the second round. Albeit the Brit unfortunately had a groin problem during her loss to Elena Rybakina in the latter stages of Indian Wells where she had to retire when it looked like she was fighting back.

This proved to be too much of an issue for her as she withdrew with a lower back injury from this week's Miami Open. Peyton Stearns will now face a qualifier and then face Jaqueline Cristian if she wins through not Raducanu with the Romanian now 34th seed.

Maya Joint also swiftly withdrew from the tournament also citing lower back problems. She lost in the opening round of Indian Wells ironically to Jaqueline Cristian priorly mentioned and now won't play in Florida. While Emma Navarro was unknown as to why she decided to withdraw but major doubts have been cast on her future at the top level anyway with the American now World No.27 and has barely won a game all season.

She now heads to the Charleston Open, the tournament ran by her father Ben as one of the leading lights hoping to get out of her slump ahead of the clay court season. She did in fact play in Austin last week too on the WTA 125k circuit, a title won by Lala Tararudee surprisingly in regards to her beating Bianca Andreescu who had a tough run through to the final defeating Solana Sierra, Renata Zarazua, Emerson Jones and Paula Badosa.

But Navarro lost in the very first round. She has now completely shut down her Sunshine Double while Oleksandra Oliynykova is also an intriguing one. She had such a good start to the year but after reaching the final in Antalya at the start of March losing to Anhelina Kalinina, she pulled out of a further tournament in the Turkish city and then has not played either Indian Wells or Miami.

She is also not ready to return. A tournament where perhaps Coco Gauff was going to be the leading casualty but she is set to play and others who perhaps weren't expected to withdraw aren't. They join the likes of Lois Boisson, Marketa Vondrousova, Barbora Krejcikova among others who had all withdrawn prior to play starting anyway.