{"id":442037,"date":"2026-01-30T01:56:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T01:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/442037\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T01:56:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T01:56:09","slug":"emma-raducanu-splits-with-coach-francis-roig-after-less-than-six-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/442037\/","title":{"rendered":"Emma Raducanu splits with coach Francis Roig after less than six months"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Athletic has live coverage of the 2026 Australian Open men\u2019s semifinals<\/a> featuring Carlos Alcaraz vs. Alexander Zverev<\/a> and Novak Djokovic vs. Jannik Sinner<\/a>.<\/p>\n

British No. 1 Emma Raducanu has announced she has split with coach Francis Roig after less than six months.<\/p>\n

Raducanu, 23, revealed on social media that her and Roig had mutually decided to split, following her second-round exit at the Australian Open<\/a> last week.<\/p>\n

The British No.1 will now embark on her latest search for a coach, having worked with seven permanent ones, as well as a number of others on a more temporary basis, since her breakout summer in 2021.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrancis, thank you for our time together,\u201d Raducanu posted on Instagram. \u201cYou have been more than a coach to me and I will cherish the many good times we spent together on and off the court.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we have come to the conclusion together that we ought not to move forward, please know that l am very grateful for all you have taught me and fond of our time shared.\u201d<\/p>\n

A representative for Raducanu described the switch as \u201ca mutual decision to part ways\u201d and \u201ca highly respected relationship that ended on good terms,\u201d while a source close to Roig did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Alexis Canter, a British player, will be Raducanu\u2019s temporary coach for her next tournament. The Transylvania Open begins in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, at the start of February.<\/p>\n

Raducanu played two Grand Slams with Roig \u2014 who was a key member of Rafael Nadal\u2019s team between 2005 and 2022 \u2014 in her coaching box.<\/p>\n

After hiring Roig in August<\/a>, Raducanu reached the third round of the US Open, where she fell to Elena Rybakina \u2014 who sealed her place in the Australian Open final Thursday<\/a> \u2014 before losing in straight sets to the unseeded Anastasia Potapova in the first major of the 2026 season.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Raducanu and Roig only began working together in August. (Clive Brunskill \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Following her exit in Melbourne, Raducanu said in her news conference that she wanted \u201cto be playing a different way\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I\u2019m going to take a few days, get back home, and try and just re-evaluate my game a bit,\u201d Raducanu said, adding: \u201cI think the misalignment with how I\u2019m playing right now and how I want to be playing is something that I just want to work on.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, I just want to hit the ball to the corners, and hard. I feel like I\u2019m doing all this variety, and it\u2019s not doing what I want it to do. I need to just work on playing in a way more similar to how I was playing when I was younger.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always just changed direction, took the ball early, and went for it. I think I do have the ability to do many things on the court, but I feel like, as I\u2019m learning all those skills, it\u2019s like I need to stick to my guns a bit as well and work on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Raducanu was forced to curtail her 2025 season in October following a foot injury, and played three competitive matches in the lead-up to the Australian Open, in the Hobart International and the United Cup.<\/p>\n

She beat Mananchaya\u00a0Sawangkaew in the first round in Melbourne, but missed the opportunity to face world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka in the third round when she was beaten 6-7(3), 2-6 by Potapova, a match in which she dropped serve six times.<\/p>\n

The 2021 U.S. Open champion had enjoyed an encouraging period of results while working informally with Mark Petchey, the commentator and former coach of Andy Murray, as she reached the quarterfinals of Queen\u2019s, the third round of Wimbledon, and the semifinals of the Citi Open in Washington D.C.<\/p>\n

Nick Cavaday, her last permanent coach before Roig, stepped down in January of last year.<\/p>\n

\u2018It felt like a question of when she would split with Francis Roig, not if\u2019<\/p>\n

Analysis from Charlie Eccleshare, senior tennis writer in Melbourne, Australia<\/p>\n

As Emma Raducanu laid out exactly how unhappy she was with her game after losing to Anastasia Potapova in the second round, it felt like a question of when she would split with Francis Roig, not if.<\/p>\n

Raducanu is extremely single-minded; once she believes she is no longer moving in the right direction with someone, she doesn\u2019t see much point in carrying down that path.<\/p>\n

There had been improvements early on in their partnership, with Raducanu pushing world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka to a third-set tiebreak at the Cincinnati Open in August, but that ultimately didn\u2019t lead to the kind of sustained changes Raducanu wanted. One of her principal desires was to go from scrapping to win points to dictating matters from the back of the court.<\/p>\n

A truncated pre-season didn\u2019t help. When Raducanu spoke to a few reporters at the National Tennis Centre in London late last year, she seemed relaxed and content after a season where she had halved her ranking to No. 29. But a foot problem disrupted her off-season, which she spent in Barcelona, and she looked undercooked by the time she was back competing in January.<\/p>\n

Her forehand in particular had changed significantly, with her lengthened swing appearing unsuited to fast hard courts. More concerningly, Raducanu appeared uncertain of how and why it had happened.<\/p>\n

Raducanu was clearly frustrated with the direction her game was going in and said after losing to Potapova that she wanted to go back to the identity she assumed as a free-hitting 18 year old when winning the U.S. Open in 2021. During the Potapova match, she barely spoke or made eye contact with Roig, who sat in the back of her box rather than the front.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the split appears to have been more about philosophical differences than personal ones, with Raducanu wanting a more front-footed game than Roig was pushing for. The divergence of opinion resulted in confusion and the technical drift that led to Raducanu\u2019s forehand looking so out of sorts in Melbourne.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Athletic has live coverage of the 2026 Australian Open men\u2019s semifinals featuring Carlos Alcaraz vs. Alexander Zverev…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":442038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-442037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}