Emma Raducanu has been urged to stop “dipping in and out of tennis” after a stop-start comeback year.
The Brit returned in January ranked outside the top 300 after having three surgeries and has since climbed to No. 59.
But Raducanu has also missed large portions of the season due to setbacks and schedule management. And Andy Murray’s ex-coach wants to see her commit to playing more tennis so she can continue climbing.
Raducanu has faced criticism for some of her scheduling decisions this year. She skipped French Open qualifying to focus on the grass season which paid off – she enjoyed deep runs in Nottingham, Eastbourne and Wimbledon.
The 22-year-old then missed the Olympics on clay in favour of the North American hard-court swing. But she didn’t play qualifying events in Canada or Cincinnati and it later emerged that she had been dealing with an injury.
After a first-round US Open exit, a tearful Raducanu admitted she should’ve competed more. However, things didn’t go to plan when she got injured at the Korea Open and had to miss the rest of the Asian swing.
There have still been promising signs as she climbed up the rankings despite playing fewer tournaments. But Mark Petchey now says Raducanu must stop skipping portions of the season and commit to playing a full schedule.
“The harder you work, the easier it becomes when you play tennis matches,” Murray’s ex-coach told Betway. “When you know you’ve put in the work the matches become ‘easier’ because your practice sessions should be arguably harder than the matches themselves.
“Emma is too good in my opinion not to succeed. She’s too athletic. She’s too motivated when she’s in between the lines. I think sometimes there have been a few times when she hasn’t been as prepared as she would like to be.”
While he knows Raducanu has the game to succeed, the coach and pundit wants her to find some consistency. Petchey continued: “I have 100 per cent confidence she will do the work in the off-season.
“There’s nobody out there that’s going to enjoy playing Emma when she’s fully fit and fully motivated. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to sit here and say to you that she’s going to be pushing a lot of the top 10 players consistently over the next twelve months.
“But there has to be a commitment to week in week out tournaments. The dipping in and out doesn’t help the physical side of things. I want her to have longevity in the sport. I don’t want her out of the sport at 26 or 27.
“Her team should be looking at how they manage her from here on in for another fifteen years of playing this sport if that’s what she wants to do. I think she’s well placed to do that.”
Petchey – who worked with Raducanu before her breakthrough summer in 2021 – already believes the world No. 59 is aware of her scheduling problems.
“From my perspective what Emma has had to face in the last two and a half years are good harsh lessons,” he explained. “Those lessons have made her realise that if she wants to be one of the best players in the world there’s a way that you have to do it. There’s not really a cheat sheet.
“There’s a volume of work and a necessary number of tournaments that you have to play. My sense is that she’s super aware of that now.
“From that perspective, I think she is in the right sort of spot that she needs to be in, in terms of being able to become a player that’s residing comfortably inside the world’s top 20.”
If Raducanu can play a full schedule, Petchey has a big prediction. He added: “Physically, hopefully, those sorts of issues are behind her.
“But if she plays a relatively full season, I think she’ll be inside the top 25 looking at where her game is at and the things that she’s trying to prove. I do think she needs to put her game on the court consistently now for six months.
“She doesn’t have to change too many things. There comes a point where you need to put that game on the court for six months and get the results. I genuinely think that lessons have been learned and she’s going to fly high.”
Source link
