Emma Raducanu has hit back at recent suggestions that one of her sponsors took back the car it gifted her.

Raducanu shared six photographs on her Instagram page on Thursday, including one of herself in a car that appeared to be a Porsche – alongside a printed message that read: “Like I vanished and reappeared.”

Some reports last week suggested that Porsche had reclaimed the £125,000 911 Carrera GTS it had previously lent her, although a spokesperson for the company insisted it remained happy with her performance as a brand ambassador.

Raducanu appeared to suggest that all was well this week when she posted the image from the driver’s seat of a Porsche, although it was not clear if it was the same car or when the photograph was taken.

She was also pictured speaking to patients in the physiotherapy department at Great Ormond Street Hospital – a detail which confirms that she has now returned from Asia.

Her management said that she would not play in the upcoming Chinese events in Ningbo or Guangzhou, which leaves Hong Kong at the end of the month as the last tour event of a relatively sparse playing schedule this season. It is followed only by Raducanu’s scheduled appearance at the Billie Jean King Cup finals in Malaga.

Raducanu has played 31 tour matches in 2024 at 13 events. She won 18 of them, lifting her ranking from No 301 at the start of the year to No 57 now. It is her first season after double wrist and ankle surgery, and she said: “I’m not in any big rush to play loads. I’d rather target tournaments and be ready to play the tournaments I’ve entered in.”

It should be said, though, that most of the women who will contest the WTA Finals in Riyadh next month have played more than 50 matches this year, with Emma Navarro not far away from clocking 80.

Raducanu retired from her most recent match against Daria Kasatkina in Seoul, citing sprained ligaments in her foot. That injury has kept her sidelined since mid-September, but she is nearing a comeback and is hopeful of playing in Hong Kong on Oct 28.

British tennis’s other most high-profile player is also nearing a return to the tour, with Jack Draper heading for the indoor event in Vienna a week earlier.

Draper was unable to complete his meeting with Ugo Humbert in Tokyo last month because of an abdominal issue. It came soon after he enjoyed a small taste of the sort of spotlight that Raducanu has become used to when he made a run to the semi-finals of September’s US Open.

Standing at No 20 in the world rankings and No 17 in the so-called Race to Turin, which accounts only for this season’s results, Draper still has a mathematical chance of qualifying for the ATP Finals if he were to perform brilliantly in Vienna and the ensuing Masters 1000 event in Paris.

But this would require other results to fall in Draper’s favour. Assuming this unlikely scenario does not come to pass, then he has two more tournaments remaining before the end of a transformational season in which he has already climbed 42 places on the ladder and landed his first ATP title.