Rehiring Richardson looks to have been a masterstroke.<\/p>\n
Under his tuition she has played four tournaments – including the 2021 US Open and this year’s Queen’s – and won 14 of her 17 matches.<\/p>\n
Richardson is an old-school coach who brings volume to create good habits – basically, hitting plenty of balls and putting in the hard yards.<\/p>\n
Known as a ‘gentle giant’, Raducanu says Richardson also has a fiery side that ignites the competitive spark in her.<\/p>\n
His messaging can sometimes be sparse, but the targeted input has an impact with a player who likes to be challenged by her coaches.<\/p>\n
During the second set against Vekic, Richardson could be heard telling Raducanu to drive returns up the middle of the court – to drag her opponent into the longer duels that she did not relish.<\/p>\n
It was a tactic which changed the complexion of the match.<\/p>\n
“It’s great to have him back. I think we have been working on this game style. The whole week I have been playing really, really good tennis and the brand of tennis that I really want to play,” Raducanu said.<\/p>\n
“I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily the old Emma. I think it’s the new Emma.<\/p>\n
“You take all the lessons and experience, all the different ups and downs, and you take everything. You understand a lot more what’s going on and what works for you.”<\/p>\n
Raducanu has shown she plays better when surrounded by long-time confidants who she trusts implicitly.<\/p>\n
On home turf, with a swell of support from friends and fans, it has been striking how relaxed she has looked – and that has enabled her to play with the freedom she craves.<\/p>\n
That has also been evident at Wimbledon where, aside from her fairytale in New York, she has produced the best Slam results of her career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rehiring Richardson looks to have been a masterstroke. Under his tuition she has played four tournaments – including…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-477371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}