Emma Raducanu has started working with Dmitry Tursunov, the Russian coach who parted ways with Anett Kontaveit last month, her management has confirmed.
Raducanu, who is in Washington DC for the start of the North American hard-court swing, has been without a full-time coach since ending her partnership with Torben Beltz in April.
The British teenager has since sought input from a variety of sources including Iain Bates, the LTA’s head of women’s tennis, Louis Cayer, the British governing body’s senior performance adviser, and Jane O’Donoghue, the former British player who coached her as a junior.
Tursunov has now become the latest addition to Raducanu’s coaching cast of thousands, and if all goes well in Washington the 39-year-old will reportedly remain in her corner all the way through to her defence of the US Open, which begins in New York on 29 August.
Tursunov’s recruitment comes at a crucial moment for Raducanu, who will need good showings in Washington, Toronto and Cincinnati if she is to avoid a significant drop in the rankings from her current position of 10th. Under the 12-month rolling ranking system, Raducanu has 2,040 points to defend from last year’s extraordinary run at Flushing Meadows, where she came through qualifying to win the title without dropping a set.
The points she earned for reaching the last eight of an ITF event in Pennsylvania, and the final of the WTA 125 in Chicago, are also set to drop off her tally next month. Should Raducanu fail to add to her total in the weeks ahead, she will plummet to a position outside the top 100.
Tursunov will therefore need to hit the ground running. Happily for Raducanu, the Russian has form for such success. Immediately after joining forces with Kontaveit before last year’s US Open, Tursunov guided the Estonian to her first title in four years in Cleveland. It was the start of a remarkable run of success for Kontaveit, who would rise from 30th in the world to number two under Tursunov’s guidance, winning a total of five titles and qualifying for the season-ending WTA Finals for the first time.
When the collaboration came to an end last month, Kontaveit explained to the Estonian public broadcaster EER that the Russian invasion of Ukraine had made it difficult for the Moscow-born Tursunov to travel freely.
“Since he has a Russian passport, it is very difficult for him to get visas at the moment, meaning he can’t accompany me to many tournaments,” said Kontaveit. “I still feel I need a coach who can accompany me and who does not have so many practical issues.”
Tursunov was unable to travel to the US with Kontaveit in March, and while that problem has evidently been solved, the road ahead will not be without difficulty for Raducanu. Tursunov also had what Kontaveit described as “a visa problem in relation to England”, although the Home Office has refused to comment on whether he was blocked from entering the country, or whether he will be able to do so in the future.
What is clear is that Tursunov, who also presided over Aryna Sabalenka’s rise into the world’s top five, will enter the collaboration with his eyes wide open. Raducanu has quickly acquired a reputation for chopping and changing coaches, infamously jettisoning Andrew Richardson, the coach who oversaw her victory at Flushing Meadows, within weeks of winning her first major. Shortly after Richardson’s departure, Tursunov said he would be wary of working with Raducanu.
“There is such a term ‘coaching carousel’, when coaches go in a circle,” said Tursunov. ”Now Emma Raducanu, who won the US Open, is laying off the people she worked with. Naturally, everyone is shocked.
“If someone from her team called me now and asked if I wanted to train her, I would tremble with fear, because you don’t know when you will be fired.”