Emma Raducanu says she is determined to wrest back control of her \u201cnatural\u201d tennis style, with the British No 1 eager not to be bound by the diktats of a single coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to come back to my natural way of playing. That takes time to relearn because that\u2019s something that has been coached out of me a little bit,\u201d Raducanu told BBC Sport. \u201cI have had a lot of people telling me what to do, how to play, and it hasn\u2019t necessarily fit. I don\u2019t necessarily want to have one coach in the role because anyone I bring in is straight away going to be scrutinised \u2013 even if it\u2019s a trial.<\/p>\n
\u201cI might feel the pressure to stick with them, even if it\u2019s not necessarily the right decision. I would love to have a coach that works well, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s necessarily going to be easy to find one person and they are going to check every box.<\/p>\n
Raducanu is back in action this week at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, where a good run could lift her from her world ranking of 24th. It has been another turbulent start to a season<\/a> for the 23-year-old, who went into the Australian Open underprepared because of a foot injury, parted ways with another coach in Francisco Roig, reached her first final since the US Open in Romania and then struggled with illness.<\/p>\n The split with Roig<\/a> followed a second-round Australian Open defeat<\/a> by Anastasia Potapova that saw Raducanu voice her unhappiness with the way she was playing under the Spaniard. She will be helped again in California by Mark Petchey, who served as an ad hoc coach for several months during the spring and summer last season, while her hitting partner, Alexis Canter, is providing day-to-day support.<\/p>\n Yet the former US Open champion is not ruling out hiring another full-time coach. \u201cI definitely have my mind open to it,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s just that I would rather someone not come in and tell me \u2018let\u2019s do this\u2019, and I disagree with it but have to listen to them. So far Alexis has been really good, but I am definitely going to tap into a few people here and there.\u201d<\/p>\n Emma Radacanu practises before the start of the BNP Paribas Open where a good run could lift her from her world ranking of 24th. Photograph: Frey\/TPN\/Getty Images<\/p>\n While much of the focus is again on Raducanu\u2019s coaching strategy, her compatriot and former world No 4 Tim Henman believes work in the gym and on the practice court should be the priority. \u201cIt\u2019s still too stop-start,\u201d he said. \u201cShe has to become physically more resilient to be stronger and faster to then compete with the biggest hitters and the best players.<\/p>\n \u201cI understand the way she wants to play. She\u2019s an attacking baseline player. If I could add one element to her game, it would only be on the physical side \u2013 to get stronger, faster, to hit the ball harder.<\/p>\n \u201cYou look at the physicality of a [Aryna] Sabalenka, a [Iga] Swiatek, a Coco Gauff, a [Elena] Rybakina, Emma\u2019s not at that level. And to a certain extent, with her physique, she might not ever be at that level but she\u2019s got to close the gap. She\u2019s [24] in the world but I think there\u2019s a lot of us that believe she can be a lot better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emma Raducanu says she is determined to wrest back control of her \u201cnatural\u201d tennis style, with the British…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-520399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}