'I was scared to ask': Emma Raducanu on how chance meeting led to Petchey reunion

Emma Raducanu spoke about her reunion with Mark Petchey that culminated in her asking him to be her coach during the Miami Open. The 2021 US Open champion has had 8 coaches since winning the title in 2021, and is currently seeking greater stability with Petchey, her childhood coach.

Back in 2021, Raducanu surprised everyone by announcing the end of her partnership with her coach Andrew Richardson, who guided her to her first Grand Slam title. Since then, there have been constant changes in Raducanu's team, with coaches such as Torben Beltz (Nov 2021 – April 2022), Dmitry Tursunov (summer 2022), and Sebastian Sachs (end of 2022 until spring 2023).

After a break from her career in 2024 to recover from a couple of wrist surgeries – which she hopes will put her injury troubles behind her – she rejoined her childhood coach Nick Cavaday, but after a year, health issues forced Cavaday to step down from the team in January 2025. Raducanu then had a brief collaboration with Vladimir Platenik, which lasted only one match at the start of the Miami Open.

Recently, the Brit reunited with Mark Petchey, another of her childhood coaches, and after a casual conversation in Miami, their collaboration began to take shape, as Raducanu revealed in a recent interview with The Guardian before the start of the Rome Open.

“Mark was already there, commentating, and it happened that I bumped into him in one of the corridors in Miami and the Dolphins’ stadium,” she says. “He’s someone that I trust. So we were just talking. And then I was like: ‘I need to do this,’” she stated.

“It was me being scared to ask: ‘Can you help?’ And it was him not wanting to push himself. So I was just like: ‘Oh, can you maybe help me?’ And he said ‘I can help you around the commitments and stuff.’ That’s how it started. Ran into each other in the corridor.”

Raducanu will debut this Wednesday, May 7th, at the Enel Rome Open on the Super Tennis Arena against the emerging Australian star Maya Joint (No. 78), who just turned 19 two weeks ago. The teenager came through qualifying and this will be her second appearance in a WTA 1000 main draw, after falling in the first round of Indian Wells to Sorana Cirstea.