Emma Raducanu says she is not afraid to challenge a coach over how they train her and admits this could be a reason behind why there have been so many changes in her team.
The Brit has collaborated with five coaches over two years but all of those partnerships have since come to an end. The coaching carousel began in 2021 when Raducanu paired up with Nigel Sears who guided her to the fourth round at Wimbledon that year. A couple of months later she achieved the biggest success of her career by winning the US Open whilst being mentored by Andrew Richardson. In New York, she became the first qualifier to win a major title and didn’t drop a set in 10 matches played.
Despite that success, Raducanu opted not to continue with Richardson as she wanted to work with somebody who had more experience working on the WTA Tour. Paving the way for Angelique Kerber’s former coach Torben Beltz to step in but that setup only lasted five months. Shen then had stints with Dimitry Tursunov and Sebastian Sachs. Currently, she has not officially appointed a new coach since splitting with Sachs in June.
“I ask my coaches a lot of questions,” Raducanu told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“On certain occasions they haven’t been able to keep up with the questions I’ve asked and maybe that’s why it ended.”
The 20-year-old explains that she has always had an inquisitive approach when it comes to tennis. She has been ranked as high as 10th in the world so far in her career but has failed to win back-to-back matches at her last five Grand Slam tournaments played.
“It’s something I’ve always done. I keep provoking and asking questions to coaches and challenging their thinking as well. I’m not someone that you can just tell me what do and I’ll do it, I need to understand why and then I’ll do it.” She said.
Raducanu hasn’t played a competitive match since April after undergoing surgery on both of her wrists and one of her ankles. She is hoping to begin her comeback in December at an exhibition event that will be held in China. The Macau Tennis Masters is hosted by IMG which is the agency that looks after Raducanu’s commercial contracts.
Due to her injury-related absence, Raducanu is currently ranked 280th in the world.
