Tennis: Raducanu hires Sachs, her fifth coach in 18 months – reports
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Emma Raducanu taking on world No. 2 Ons Jabeur at the Mubadala Championship on Friday, watched by German coach Sebastian Sachs.
PHOTO: AFP
LONDON – Emma Raducanu has appointed Sebastian Sachs as her new coach, British media reported, as the German became the fifth person in 18 months to take the role.
The 2021 US Open champion Raducanu was watched by Sachs on Friday as she lost 5-7, 6-3 (10-8) to world No. 2 Ons Jabeur on her return from wrist injury in an exhibition match in Abu Dhabi.
Sachs, 30, guided Belinda Bencic to Olympic gold in Tokyo in 2021 and was earlier part of the coaching team of Victoria Azarenka, a former world No. 1.
He has teamed up with Raducanu after Dmitry Tursunov decided not to continue his partnership with the 20-year-old Briton following the 2022 US Open. The 39-year-old Russian is now coaching Bencic.
Tursunov spoke in late October of “red flags” and potential problems further down the line if she continued to listen to too many voices. He told tennismajors.com: “She’s probably a two-and-a-half-year project. Her game is very raw.
“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’.
“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.”
A representative for Raducanu was not immediately available for comment.
