Emma Raducanu labelled ‘special case’ in ongoing coaching debate
Emma Raducanu has been described as a “special case” by Alexander Zverev who suggested he believes the Briton uses her coaches differently than most players on tour.
Raducanu’s choice of coach has also raised eyebrows, with Francisco Roig the seventh man to be reportedly appointed, but he lasted only until the Australian Open.
After that, Raducanu explained that she was looking to play her natural game more than coaches would want her to and suggested she may go periods without having a permanent mentor in her box.
The lack of a permanent coach has been put to players on both the WTA and ATP tour and Zverev suggested it would never work for him.
“I think Emma is a very special case,” he said. “I love her, I really do, but I think Emma and coaching is quite a big difference between me and coaching.
I have been with the same coach for 28 years, so yeah, it’s a bit of a different question, different subject with her specifically.
I mean, she has a coach here, right, with Mark Petchey. It’s up to her. I mean, I don’t know. I have the same people around that I like to work with, so that’s just me.”
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In her reasoning for the lack of a permanent coach, Raducanu suggested she did not like others telling her how to play.
“I have had a lot of people telling me what to do, how to play, and it hasn’t necessarily fit,” she told the BBC.
“So I want to come back to my natural way of playing. That takes time to relearn because that’s something that has been coached out of me a little bit.
“I would love to have a coach that works well, but I don’t think it’s necessarily going to be easy to find one person and they are going to check every box.
“I definitely have my mind open to it. It’s just that I would rather someone not come in and tell me ‘let’s do this’, and I disagree with it but have to listen to them.”
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