Emma Raducanu’s agent says people need to ‘get over’ her decision to hire and fire coaches and warns she’ll do it for the rest of her career
- Emma Raducanu will continue to swap tennis coaches according to her agent
- The British ace has been criticised before for frequently changing coaches
- Raducanu has worked with five different experts over the past two years
Emma Raducanu will continue her hire-and-fire approach with trainers as she has done for the majority of her career so far, according to the tennis star’s agent Max Eisenbud.
The 20-year-old British star is currently recovering from having surgery on her wrists and ankle that saw her miss this summer’s French Open and Wimbledon, but has been back in the gym as she steps up her recovery.
Raducanu emerged as one of the shock Grand Slam champions in 2021 as she triumphed at the US Open as an 18-year-old ranked 150 in the world and has continued to change coaches frequently since then.
As her star status rocketed, Raducanu and her team have swapped coaches with Nigel Sears, Andrew Richardson, Torben Beltz, Dmitry Tursunov and most recently Sebastian Sachs all working with the rising star in the past two years.
Criticism has been targeted at the Canadian-born athlete for this approach, but her agent explained that it is something that won’t change in the future.
Emma Raducanu will continue to changes coaches frequently according to her agent
The British tennis star (right) has previously worked with Nigel Sears (left) before her breakthrough at Wimbledon in 2021
‘The coaching situation, right or wrong, and this is something that her dad and Emma pretty much control on all the coaching stuff, that has been their philosophy all the way up through the juniors,’ Eisenbud told the Tennis Podcast.
‘They never had coaches for a long time. You’ve probably heard of that. For them, that is calm waters, having a coach for five months and going on to someone else.
‘That is not traditional and not the norm for most to win a Grand Slam and change your coach,’ he added.
Eisenbud further went on to explain that this was an approach adopted throughout the women’s game and highlighted how Raducanu benefitted from ending her player-coach relationship with Sears before going on to win in America.
Raducanu is yet to decide who will be in charge of working with her behind-the-scenes once she is able to play again, but her agent insisted ‘people need to get over’ coaching changes.
Raducanu (right) has also worked with German tennis coach Torben Beltz (left)
The former US Women’s Open winner (right) most recently stopped working with Sebastian Sachs (left)
‘I think you see players changing coaches all the time, particularly on the women’s tour. I think people have a hard time understanding how you can get to the fourth round of Wimbledon and then how you don’t keep working with Nigel Sears, who is a great coach and a great guy.
‘All the people when she stopped working with Nigel were killing her… then she won the US Open.
‘You were killing her for not staying with Nigel then she won the US Open. Then she changes coaches again.
‘People need to get over the fact that that’s what they need to do. It’s probably going to be like that for the rest of her career.’