Djokovic set to miss US Open, while defiant Raducanu hires Russian coach
Circuit.
This flies in the face of the Wimbledon ban on Russian players, and adds to the fact that this ban has come back to bite the AELTC, after the irony of Elena Rybakina, the current Wimbledon champion, having been born and brought up in Moscow.
Raducanu’s choice of new coach has British tongues wagging and has solicited an outcry, with various political entities warning she might be used by Russian president Putin, as a “propaganda tool”.
I would hazard a guess that Putin, who has little interest in tennis, has equally little interest in either Raducanu or Tursunov, who, according to his new employer, “likes acting around like an idiot...”.
Since her fairytale maiden Slam win, Raducanu has been plagued by a series of injuries and first round Tour losses.
Tursunov, while a member of the winning 2006 Russian Davis Cup team, hardly set the world alight as a World No 20, to the extent that current Russian players, defending US Open champion, Daniil Medvedev and 11-time Masters titleholder Andrey Rublev have done.
Tursunov had some success with Top 10 WTA player Anett Kontaveit, where she won the Kremlin Cup and the Transylvania Open back to back, before reaching the final of the WTA Finals. Thereafter they parted on account of Tursunov’s “US visa problems”.
Thus the Russian and his teenage protege’s combined credentials hardly constitute the Russian premier’s choice of a propaganda tool, and from a hypothetical perspective, Rybakina would be the better prospect on current form.
A US Open line up minus both Novak Djokovic and Emma Raducanu would be badly depleted.