Emma Raducanu\u2019s former coach Mark Petchey has assessed that the 2021 US Open champion \u201conly has one choice\u201d of playing style as he shared his thoughts on her start to the season.<\/p>\n
Raducanu<\/a> enjoyed a successful collaboration with Petchey between March and August last year, having previously been coached by the former British No 1 in 2020.<\/p>\n The Brit compiled a 20-10 record across the 10 tournaments she played while working with Petchey \u2014 the last of which was the WTA 1000 in Montreal.<\/p>\n The world No 25 has been without a permanent coach since last month, when she parted ways with Francisco Roig, who she had hired in August.<\/p>\n Raducanu entered 2026 following an off-season disrupted by a foot injury, and she holds a 6-5 record.<\/p>\n After starting the year at the United Cup, where she lost her only match, Raducanu reached the quarter-finals of the Hobart International and the second round at the Australian Open.<\/p>\n The 23-year-old then won four matches to reach the final at the WTA 250 event in Cluj-Napoca last week, before retiring in her opening round clash with Camila Osorio<\/a> at this week\u2019s WTA 1000 in Doha.<\/p>\n During the latest episode of Tennis Channel\u2019s The Big T<\/em> podcast, Petchey and former world No 9 Andrea Petkovic discussed Raducanu.<\/p>\n Petkovic:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cShe had some physical issues at the beginning of the year, and I think her off-season didn\u2019t exactly go ideally, right\u2026 It\u2019s fair to say?\u201d<\/p>\n Petchey:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cYeah, I think it\u2019s fair. We have messaged a few times. I did watch her play [in Cluj-Napoca].<\/p>\n \u201cObviously it was nice to see her get some wins, it was nice to see some confidence, it was nice to see the fight was back.<\/p>\n Emma Raducanu \u2018still a distance from her physical prime\u2019 \u2013 leading injury expert amid Brit\u2019s struggles<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Victoria Mboko in line for latest WTA Rankings breakthrough amid thrilling Doha run<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Want more from Tennis365? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list<\/a> for tennis coverage you can trust.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cShe was playing the way that she wants to play, that was something I think she felt that she had lost a little bit, in recent times.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I think from my perspective watching her play, she really only has one choice \u2014 she needs to stay up on the baseline, she needs to be able to redirect, and she needs to serve well. And if she can put those components on the court, she\u2019s going to give herself a chance to win big matches.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought she did well to kind of get through the draw. I don\u2019t necessarily feel her tennis was where it needed to be. I do think that she was suffering a little bit from health problems.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I think she\u2019s got a good three, four weeks of hard work to get her tennis back to where you would like to see her be, in terms of being able to challenge those big hitters, which has obviously been, in recent times, the stumbling block for her.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I think there is still work to do to kind of put that piece of the puzzle back together so that she can feel very comfortable with what she\u2019s doing out on the tennis court.<\/p>\n \u201cSo it was a nice week for points, it was a nice week for confidence to know that you can put back-to-back wins together, but I would think that she would feel as though her tennis needs to go up quite a few gears if she\u2019s suddenly gonna get back out on the court with [Aryna] Sabalenka and [Elena] Rybakina.\u201d<\/p>\n READ NEXT: Coco Gauff candidly speaks out about her struggles after early Qatar Open exit<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The post Emma Raducanu\u2019s former coach says she has \u2018one choice\u2019 after Francisco Roig split<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Emma Raducanu\u2019s former coach Mark Petchey has assessed that the 2021 US Open champion \u201conly has one choice\u201d of playing style as he shared his thoughts on her start to the season. Raducanu enjoyed a successful collaboration with Petchey between March and August last year, having previously been coached by the former British No 1 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}WTA Tour News<\/h2>\n