Emma Raducanu has been called out for her “ridiculous” coaching decisions after explaining why she goes through her mentors in quick succession. Fellow British Grand Slam champion Ann Jones said players had to answer their own questions as she hit out. And the 1969 Wimbledon winner also had a theory about Raducanu’s injury struggles.
Raducanu has struggled since winning the 2021 US Open as a qualifier, failing to replicate her success elsewhere and dealing with major injury setbacks. The former world No 10 underwent three surgeries in May on both of her wrists and one ankle. And she has yet to nail down a consistent team since her triumph in New York.
Three-time Grand Slam champion Jones has now weighed in on Raducanu’s nightmare couple of years, criticising her attitude towards coaches. It comes after the 21-year-old recently admitted that she previously ended coaching partnerships after her mentors failed to keep up with the number of “provoking” questions that she asked.
“We had to find our own answers. You have to work at things yourself,” Jones told the Daily Mail. The 85-year-old also referenced one of Raducanu’s past decisions, which saw the Brit axe coach Andrew Richardson two weeks after her US Open triumph in 2021.
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She continued: “To fire a coach after she had just won the US Open was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.” Jones also thought that Raducanu’s decision to chop and change her mentors and her game style had resulted in injuries.
“Life is about momentum. If you’ve got the momentum, you have to take advantage of it and carry on,” she explained. “You’ve got a natural game. What you need to do is to improve what you have got. You don’t have coaches come along and change your game.
“The results are clear. You get injured, because it’s not natural for you to hit the ball in that way. It was natural to hit it the way you hit it in the first place.” Raducanu is set to make her return at the ASB Classic in Auckland at the beginning of January but Jones isn’t sure whether the young Brit can rediscover the form that helped her win a Major.
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She added: “How do you recover your natural game after it has been changed? It’s very difficult to find what you had before. I think she’s really enjoyed winning and I don’t think she wants to lose now. It’s a waste and we could do with a champion here.”
Jones’ comments come after Raducanu addressed her tendency to go through coaches in quick succession. The 21-year-old worked with five different mentors in the space of 18 months and is currently without a proper team as she bids to make her comeback.
“I ask my coaches a lot of questions, I think that on certain occasions they haven’t been able to keep up with the questions I’ve asked so maybe that’s why it ended,” she told BBC Radio 4 today. “But yeah, it’s something I’ve always done and I keep provoking, I keep asking questions to coaches and challenging their thinking as well. I’m not someone that you can just tell me what to do and I’ll do it, I need to understand why and then I’ll do it.”
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