sport news MIKE DICKSON: Can Emma Raducanu deliver in 2023? After a year of injury and ... trends now
Not for Emma Raducanu the well-travelled route to the forthcoming Australian Open, which saw dozens of players spending their pre-season in Dubai before heading to cities on the giant continent.
Ever the outlier, the former US Open champion — just turned 20 — spent Christmas in Singapore before heading to Auckland for this week’s annual WTA event in New Zealand
The city-state off the Malay peninsula is not on the beaten path of tennis, but Raducanu enjoys its fusion of cultures and chose it for her first week of intensive practice with new coach Sebastian Sachs.
Emma Raducanu is dressed to thrill - but can she improve upon a difficult 2022 in the New Year?
Raducanu has undergone her first week of intensive practice with new coach Sebastian Sachs
The 30-year-old German is the latest to trial working alongside the British No 1, with a view to a permanent arrangement.
Of all the official coaching appointments made by Raducanu — and there have been five already — this may be the most important.
For it is the year when she needs to stamp an identity on her game style and make the transition into becoming a hardened professional who can challenge for the big titles.
Sachs is young but has amassed a wide range of experience with top German players and former world No 1 Victoria Azarenka. An experienced WTA coach who has been around him on the tour describes Sachs as ‘a decent guy who seems to be very thorough and knows his stuff’.
Ever the outlier, Raducanu decided not to spend pre-season in Dubai like many of her fellow pros
The same coach ventured that there is only a certain amount of tinkering you can do with any player — the forehand is particularly key in this case — and that one voice is needed to assert a method on which Raducanu can rely.
She starts the season ranked 78, a modest number that might encourage the view that the GB No 1 will always struggle to emulate what she did at Flushing Meadows in 2021.
It might come as a surprise to those of that opinion that, despite the loss of her US Open points, the only player younger than Raducanu who is higher in the listings is American Coco Gauff. There are only six players aged 20 or below in the WTA top 100.
This suggests that Raducanu has not fallen as far off the pace as sometimes perceived. And that is after the jumble of 2022, when there was a constant swirl of distraction around her.
Arguably its low point was the grass season, when she yet again battled injury and used a trusted friend, Jane O’Donoghue, as a temporary coach despite her no longer working in tennis.
Emma Raducanu is set to tackle the new tennis season with a new coach in Sebastian Sachs
The German helped Switzerland's Belinda Bencic (left) win an Olympic gold medal last year
For all that, Raducanu still beat a decent player on her Centre Court debut, Alison van Uytvanck, before losing against Caroline Garcia. That result was lent perspective by the French woman having a career-best season which saw her end up as world No 4.
‘I’ve had to adapt to the other things,’ Raducanu said yesterday of her past 12 months. ‘I haven’t
