Emma Raducanu rehiring coach who led her to US Open glory can fix trust issues

Emma Raducanu has rehired Andrew Richardson – the man who oversaw her victorious US Open campaign in 2021 – as her coach.

Raducanu spent a few days training with Richardson last month at the Spanish tennis academy, where he has been working for the past five years.

This was initially described as a brief pit-stop rather than a long-term association, but a deal has now been struck and Richardson will begin his new role in Strasbourg on Friday.

If Richardson is counted twice in the list, Raducanu has now accumulated 10 coaches in a career which has yet to settle into any kind of equilibrium.

She is ranked at No 30 in the world – a position which should earn her a seeding at the French Open in just over a week’s time – but has not played a match since March 8 after pulling out of four successive events on account of post-viral fatigue.

With no competitive clay-court tennis under her belt this season, Raducanu will need to find her feet quickly on this tricky surface if she is to give herself any chance of making an impact at Roland Garros: a venue where her record shows just two wins and two losses.

Richardson, 52, was known during his playing days for the left-handed serve that he bashed down, using his 6ft 7in frame to achieve intimidating pace and bounce. He reached the third round of Wimbledon in singles and the world’s top 100 in doubles.

Nicknamed “Flex”, Richardson was not well known on the international coaching circuit before he guided Raducanu to her astonishing breakthrough in New York five years ago. This explains why she chose to end the collaboration shortly afterwards, telling reporters that she needed someone with more experience of the WTA Tour.

“It’s tough to have that conversation with anyone,” Raducanu said, a couple of weeks after lifting the trophy on Arthur Ashe Stadium. “But I need someone who’s had that professional tour experience, and has been through it, and seen players in my situation for many years, going through the same because it’s going to take a lot.”

Richardson has previously said that his nine-week contract with Raducanu expired after the US Open, and that he was available to continue – thus contradicting an oft-repeated theory among online tennis sleuths that he had quit Raducanu’s camp to coach his son Rocco instead.

As he said in 2023: “After probably 10 days to two weeks [after the US Open] I didn’t have a contract. We were in the process of renegotiating and then I got a brief call from her agent telling me they were going to go in a different direction, and that was the end of it.”

Richardson can be missing piece in jigsaw

Considering how difficult Emma Raducanu has found it to settle with any coaches since Andrew Richardson, one wonders whether she regrets her hasty decision to part with him just a few days after her name-making triumph at the 2021 US Open.

She has since spoken about the challenges of establishing a bond with newcomers to her camp, saying last summer: “I have been burnt a few times. A few people who I’ve really trusted have surprised me”.

This helps to explain why recent appointments have tended to be backward-looking. Raducanu spent the 2024 season with Nick Cavaday, who had overseen her junior training programmes at Bromley Tennis Centre, and would probably have continued that partnership but for his withdrawal with chronic health problems in the early months of 2025.

She then turned to Mark Petchey, a confidant from the summer of 2021, on an ad-hoc basis through the middle of last season, even though Petchey had pre-existing broadcasting commitments that made it impossible for him to attend to her training full-time.

“The last few years, it’s been very difficult for me to trust new people, especially those who have not necessarily known me from the years before the US Open,” explained Raducanu 12 months ago in Rome.

To further extend her recent pattern, she travelled to this year’s Rome Masters with Jane O’Donoghue – now a banker but formerly her junior coach from the Lawn Tennis Association – before deciding to make a late withdrawal on fitness grounds.

Within this context, Richardson was perhaps the only missing piece that had yet to return to the jigsaw puzzle. His re-recruitment makes complete sense. We can only hope it gives her the stability she has been lacking in the early months of 2026.

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