Murray turns to coach passed over by Raducanu
Carril on board as US Open champion signals her own deal Djokovic gets revenge over Medvedev in Paris Masters final
Andy Murray will be working with a new coach in Stockholm this week, the in-demand Spaniard Esteban Carril, as he looks to turbo-charge his recent climb up the rankings.
The news has ramifications beyond Murray’s camp, however, as Carril is the one coach who is known to have performed a trial with Emma Raducanu last month.
Just to send further ripples across the small pond of British tennis, Raducanu told reporters yesterday that she has a coach in place for the Australian Open in January. Strangely, though, she declined to reveal the identity of the new appointment, although Carril is now clearly out of the running for that post.
Sources suggested that Murray felt he needed a shake-up, after a month in which he has beaten three top-50 players but also produced an uncharacteristically wayward effort against unheralded German Dominik Koepfer. His ranking has recovered a little in that time, from a low point of No172 to 144, but still fails to reflect the quality of many of his recent performances.
None of this means that Murray’s head coach, Jamie Delgado, is leaving. The idea is for Carril – whose presence in Stockholm is, again, being described as a trial – to add extra input, in the same way Mark Petchey did during the summer.
Raducanu, meanwhile, continues to travel to European events without a coach. She is in the Austrian city of Linz this week with a small entourage comprising her mother Renee and agent Chris Helliar.
“I’m here on my own and being my [own] coach again this week,” said Raducanu, “which I think is really good for me long-term. I’m really feeling positive about my coaching situation. It’s in a good place. And yes, I will have a coach in place at the Australian Open.”
Asked why she was not ready to reveal the coach’s name, she said: “It’s a bit confidential. I mean, it’s my decision. It’s not, like, fully done and yes, that’s it. It’s in a good place.” Raducanu’s coaching situation has been a talking point since Andrew Richardson’s contract was not renewed after her US Open triumph. When Raducanu lost her opening match at Indian Wells a month ago, she told reporters: “If any experienced coaches are out there looking, you know where to find me.”
Volunteers have not been numerous. The rapid turnover of coaches within the Raducanu camp – which saw Nigel Sears oversee her grasscourt events this summer, before Richardson took over for the American hard-court leg – led Maria Sharapova’s former coach Michael Joyce to call the position a “poisoned chalice”.
Raducanu will play a qualifier – either Kateryna Kozlova or Xinyu Wang – in her opening match in Linz tomorrow. She reaffirmed yesterday that she had felt offcolour in Romania the week before last, where she lost heavily to Marta Kostyuk in the quarter-finals of the Transylvanian Open. But five PCR tests all showed negative for Covid, and Raducanu insists that she is now “feeling the ball well” again as she prepares for her final event of the season.
Meanwhile, Novak Djokovic gained a measure of revenge for the crushing of his Grand Slam dreams by defeating Daniil Medvedev to win the Rolex Paris Masters yesterday.
The world No 1 was back in match action this week for the first time since falling one victory short of claiming all four slam titles in a year when he was beaten by Medvedev in the US Open final in September.
They met again for the trophy in the French capital, and second seed Medvedev had the upper hand early on, but this time Djokovic turned the tables to win 4-6, 6-3, 6-3.
A day after ensuring he would end a season on top of the rankings for a record seventh time, the Serbian set another new mark with a 37th Masters title, pulling him clear of Rafael Nadal.