Emma Raducanu gets some blunt advice she is urged to end her injury curse

Kevin Palmer
Emma Raducanu and Mark Petchey
Emma Raducanu and Mark Petchey

Emma Raducanu’s injury nightmares have ruined her hopes of building on her famous win in the 2021 US Open and now she has been given some blunt advice by a former coach.

Raducanu underwent surgery on both her wrists and her ankle in 2023 and missed large parts of last year due to injury and a reluctance to play in qualifying for tournaments she had not qualified to play in.

That fuelled the accusation that Raducanu was in danger of becoming a part-time tennis player, with the huge cash windfall she has collected from sponsors following her breakthrough win three years ago leading cynics to suggest her hunger for the sport has waned.

Now respected coach Mark Petchey, who worked with Raducanu prior to her US Open win, has suggested the time has come for Raducanu to play a run of tournaments, even if she is struggling with niggling injuries.

Raducanu pulled out of her first tournament of 2025 with a back problem and Petchey believes her only hope of long-term success is a schedule that gives her a chance to build up a winning momentum on the court and physical resistance to play a full-time schedule.

“I hope for Emma’s sake that she can play the next six months without missing a tournament, whether she’s hurt or not,” Petchey told JeffBet.

“I think that she needs to kind of go across the Rubicon and play every week, regardless of how she feels, regardless of the outcome of the result, regardless if she loses.

“I think she just needs to go and play and get over that because I think there is a chance that it could morph into something a little bit more serious on that scale. I think that there’s a very real need to just play. I know that some of the results may not be great and if she’s obviously significantly injured, there’s a chance of doing some real damage to her body. Then obviously she has to pull the rip cord.

“My advice would be to just go and play and see what you’re capable of because she’s capable of great things and even if she’s not at 100%, I think she’s still capable of going very deep in a lot of these tournaments.”

Petchey also defended Raducanu from critics who appeal to revel in her each and every fitness setback, as he suggested the 22-year-old still has plenty of time to get back to the top of the game.

“I’m still going to be on the side of compassion in Emma’s case. I still think she’s young,” he added.

“I still think that she is figuring out what she needs. She’s hired a physical trainer that’s been with some of the best in the world. I would rather look at it that those actions are more important than the words.

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“You can look at the words from a press conference, you can talk how she’s said she’s had niggles in the back and they’ve usually gone a lot quicker than they did.

“You can read whatever you want into that but the fact that she’s hired somebody that has been at the best one of the best sort of trainers in the world that knows what the elite level is, surely that’s what we should be looking at in this stage.

“It’s easy to get caught up in the fact that she’s pulled out of another tournament because of an injury, but if you’re not serious about it, I just don’t believe you’re going to hire somebody like that to spend the money that it will cost you to put yourself in the physical shape, the dark days that you had to go through to push your body.

“It is a bit of a reaction to the fact that she hasn’t been able to do that as often as she would have liked or done it as often as she would have liked.

“Again, I would give her the benefit of the doubt in this situation that her desire is to become the best athlete that she could be and put herself in a place where she could be healthy for 12 months.”

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