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Emma Raducanu has revealed she intends to continue her coaching partnership with Mark Petchey on an ad hoc basis following her quarter-final run at the Miami Open last month.
“We’re keeping things informal for now and it’s been working,” she said in a joint interview with the Guardian and the BBC before the Madrid Open. “He’s someone I’ve known for a long time and I do feel like I can trust him.
“For now there is no real thing set in stone but we’re taking it week to week and he’s helping me as much as he can alongside his current commitments.”
Raducanu had arrived at the Miami Open last month on a trial with the Slovak coach Vladimir Platenik before opting to dissolve their prospective partnership on the eve of the tournament. She instead enlisted the help of Petchey, Andy Murray’s former coach, who was in Miami for his role as a broadcaster on the Tennis Channel. They were joined there by the former player Jane O’Donoghue, Raducanu’s close friend. The 22-year-old enjoyed their time together so much that she has continued their partnership despite significant obstacles.
After Miami, which was her seventh tournament in two months, Raducanu withdrew from the Billie Jean King Cup and the WTA 250 event in Rouen in order to “rest and recover” while executing a 10-day training block with Petchey in Los Angeles.
“We created our own little bubble and it was nice to be working on my game out there but at the same time having fun and enjoying it,” she said.
Petchey will be in Madrid this week, along with O’Donoghue, but Raducanu stated that he is “fitting me in around” his other commitments. Still, she is satisfied: “I’m happy with the set-up going forward right now – it’s been working well. I like him a lot and I’ve known him since before the US Open and it’s nice to have familiar faces around.”
Like many of Raducanu’s choices, opting to work informally with a coach is unconventional. She says that it has been difficult to handle the scrutiny she has been under every time she makes a decision but she is slowly learning how to block out the noise and lean on the people around her. “It’s really difficult, because I think every decision I make is made on such a big scale that it’s up for judgment,” she said.
“Every time I step on the court, every time I kind of make a choice, it is up for judgment. And I just need to get to a place where I’m comfortable enough and secure enough in what I’m doing that it doesn’t matter what other people are saying.
“Over the last few years, that is, truthfully, something that I have been kind of toiling with, because I would care about what people think. I think just in general, in my life, like anytime someone’s upset with me or something, it affects me.
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“So I think, the last few years, it has been difficult, but I think I’m trying to find a way now to just really do what is natural and what feels true to myself and what feels authentic. And that way I can express myself and, not even about the tennis, just feel a better person, just feel happier and lighter.”
As she stressed throughout the run, Raducanu believes that the lesson from her performances in Miami is to ensure that finds enjoyment in her daily life while also pursuing her goals: “I think I’m just trying to keep things more lighthearted off the court, like I’m getting on site, and then trying to just get on get off, like, pretty soon,” she said.
“That has helped me, and then just doing things outside that makes me happy. Like, for example, yesterday I just did a yoga class. It was just random.
“I’ll go on hikes. I’ll just do things that maybe, like, in the moment, or previously, I would be like: ‘Oh, maybe it’s not so professional; I need to just be locked in like, 200% of my day.’ But now I’m a lot more like: ‘No,’ because when I’m locked in I am so focused on the court, I give 200%. So I definitely need that area in my life to just decompress, relax and de-stress.”
