Emma Raducanu's latest comments suggests she has found a long-term solution to her coaching problem
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The days of Emma Raducanu hiring and firing coaches could well be something of the past with the British youngster offering a glowing review of her current mentor Nick Cavaday.
Raducanu returned to action at the Korea Open on Tuesday and she produced a gritty display to beat Peyton Stearns in the first round, battling to a 7-6 (7-4), 7-6 (7-5) victory in nearly three hours for her first win since the end of July when she beat the same opponent at the Citi Open in Washington DC.
After the match, she was asked about her relationship with Cavaday and it is clear from her reply that she prefers working with familiar faces as they bring out the best in her.
“The relationship with the coach is very good. It’s really good to be together. Nick is a competent coach but, more importantly, he is a very good person,” Raducanu said.
“I think being with a friend I’ve known for a long time in a familiar environment is the best environment for me right now, and I value the time with him.”
The 21-year-old started working with Cavaday at the backend of 2023 when she was recovering from surgery while former LTA coach Jane O’Donoghue also joined the camp in early 2024.
But the Raducanu and Cavaday relationship goes back a long way as he was her junior coach and also a former head coach of the LTA Loughborough Academy.
Andrew Richardson was her mentor during her US Open title run and he was also a familiar face as he was one of her youth coaches.
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Since then she has tried high-profile coaches Torben Beltz – who has coached the likes of Angelique Kerber and Donna Vekic – Dmitry Tursunov (Aryna Sabalenka and Anett Kontaveit) and Sebastian Sachs (Victoria Azarenka and Belinda Bencic), but always felt they were not the right fit.
Shortly after reaching the Stuttgart Open quarter-final in April, Raducanu also talked about “trust” when commenting about Cavaday, saying: “I feel very comfortable working with him. I have known him since I was a young age, so he’s someone who I feel like I can trust, and that’s a big thing for me.
“Just having people who I know before I got famous or I got any of the big whatever [was] coming my way, it was just good to have someone who’s known me before that.”
And there have been several glimpses since then that Raducanu may well have found a trusted figure to guide her back up the rankings as she also reached semi-final of the Nottingham Open, quarter-final of the Eastbourne International and last eight of the Citi DC Open.
The big disappointment came in North America when the team made a “collective call” to play only the Citi DC Open ahead of the US Open. It turned out to be a disastrous decision as Raducanu lost in the first round at Flushing Meadows.
She promised to learn from her mistakes stating: “I know when I have a lot of matches, just like every player, you feel really good, you feel like everything's automatic.
“I can learn from it. And, you know, manage my schedule slightly differently.
“It wasn't just me. It was more of like a collective call and that's what happened, and I can't really change it.”
And the whole team appeared to have learned from their mistakes as she has indicated she plans to play several tournaments during the final few months of the 2024 season and the “familiar environment” alongside Cavaday could push her back into the top 50 of the WTA Rankings.
Raducanu has climbed to No 60 after her win over Stearns and a couple more wins will see her break the top 50 barrier.
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