There was much controversy when the British Number 1 started working with Russian tennis coach Dmitry Tursunov. Many called for the dissolution of the partnership, especially given the All-England Club’s stand against Russian and Belarusian players.
The two parted ways earlier this month and it was noted that the Tursunov was the one who left while Raducanu was still interested in working together.
The Russian coach has since moved on and is now working with Belinda Bencic. He insists that a rival offer from Bencic is not the reason he left the Raducanu Camp.
In an interview, he said: “I was walking away from Emma regardless of whether there was another [player] available or not.”
“We didn’t agree on the terms and there were some red flags that just couldn’t be ignored.”
Despite their short tenure, he only has high praise for the player. Saying that despite her status, she doesn’t act like a superstar.
“Our trial period was over at the US Open but I stuck around, trying to see if there was going to be a way to impress the team,” he said, laughing.
“I really wanted to make it work. First of all, she’s absolutely great, she’s a hard worker and she doesn’t think or act like she’s a superstar. She is hungry to improve and is obsessed with tennis. I think it’s quite a rare combination. It was a very difficult decision for me to walk away from a player that I like and respect.”
“I felt it was going to be an interesting project, but a very long-term project, and as a coach, you want to have a belief that you’re going to be at work for that period. But of course, with her coaching situation, there’s now a thought going through every coach’s mind… I could have stuck around, I could have agreed on everything that her team proposed.”
“But, deep down, I felt like that wasn’t the right thing to do. Emotionally, I wanted to stay, but logically, I felt like I needed to leave. I felt like there were going to be problems later and I wanted to avoid them for my own peace of mind.”
In the last 15 months, Raducanu has gone through four ‘official’ coaches. She has worked with Nigel Sears, Andrew Richardson, and Torben Beltz.
Tursunov has also stated that he believes it will take around two and half years to get Raducanu to the top of the game.
“It’s going to take some time, but as I said to her and to pretty much everyone on her team: I think you just need to have one voice and just try that for a bit,” Tursunov said.
“The only difficult thing with her – that you actually have to do with every player – is trying to change certain things: she believed that she had to play a certain way. So I was trying to convince her to change that mindset and change her convictions about her own game…”
“That’s what I was trying to do and there was maybe a minor difficulty with that but I think we got past that and were on the right track, and she was starting to trust me a little bit more. At least, that was my perception.”