Emma Raducanu has parted ways with Dmitry Tursunov, the Russian coach with whom she began a trial collaboration in July, but has added Jez Green, Andy Murray’s former fitness trainer, to her team.
Tursunov becomes the fourth coach to leave Raducanu’s camp since last summer, although unlike his predecessors Nigel Sears, Andrew Richardson and Torben Beltz, the 39-year-old appears to be departing on his own terms.
It is understood that Tursunov, who remarked after Richardson’s departure last September that Raducanu’s reputation for firing coaches would make him “tremble with fear” if he were asked to coach the British teenager, is keen to take up an offer to work with another female player.
Despite her first-round loss to Alizé Cornet at the US Open, where she was the defending champion, Raducanu posted some encouraging results under Tursunov, reaching the last eight in Washington, scoring one-sided victories over Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka in Cincinnati, and mounting a run to the semi-finals in Seoul last month.
Yet the last of those matches, which was curtailed by a glute injury that caused her fourth mid-match retirement this year, merely underlined the physical frailties that have blighted her first full season on the tour.
Raducanu struggled with a blistered hand at the Australian Open, where she was beaten by Danka Kovinic, pulled out against Daria Gavrilova in Mexico with a hip injury the following month, retired with a sore back in Rome in May, and suffered a strained abdominal in Nottingham the following month that once again forced her off after just seven games. A wrist injury prompted her to withdraw from this week’s Transylvania Open and call time on her WTA season, although she will lead the British team at next month’s Billie Jean King Cup finals in Glasgow.
Green, the conditioning specialist who sculpted Murray into the physical specimen who won the US Open, a first Wimbledon title and an Olympic gold medal, should be well placed to help Raducanu address these recurrent problems. Muscular stability and strength, along with detailed scrutiny of movement patterns, are among the areas emphasised by Green, who has also worked with Alexander Zverev and Dominic Thiem.
Gareth Shelbourne, the fitness coach with whom Raducanu has worked since she was a junior, will continue to play a role, but Green will oversee her off-season training block pending a possible long-term arrangement if all goes well.