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Vladimir Platenik was court side in Indian Wells to see Emma Raducanu lose to Moyuka Uchijima - Getty Images/Matthew Stockman
Emma Raducanu’s latest coach Vlado Platenik has only positive things to say about her game despite being dismissed just 14 days into his trial period.
Platenik, 49, accepted a late invitation to join Raducanu in Indian Wells a fortnight ago, where he was able to squeeze just a single training session in before she lost to world No 52 Moyuka Uchijima in straight sets.
On Wednesday, Raducanu went back on court against another Japanese player – world No 188 Sayaka Ishii – and this time dropped only three games as she surged into the second round of the Miami Open.
Platenik, however, was absent from courtside after a phone call the previous evening. In a statement, Raducanu’s management said: “Emma has utmost respect for Vlado and the work they started but it wasn’t quite heading in the right direction.”
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Emma Raducanu made light work of Sayaka Ishi in the first round in Miami - Getty Images/Carmen Mandato
When Telegraph Sport asked Platenik for his version of events, he replied: “Emma said she wanted to pause the collaboration. I understand that she is under a lot of pressure and it’s not easy for her, so I respect her decision.
“I wish I had more time with her,” added Platenik, who had expected the trial period to continue at least until the French Open in late May. “But that’s sport, Emma is super talented and I hope she could take some of my advice for the future. I wish her all the best.”
During their week together in Florida, Platenik focused on the serve, which has been a problem ever since Raducanu tweaked her back during the off-season and thus arrived at the Australian Open in the middle of an uncompleted technical rebuild. In three matches there, she served 24 double-faults.
Against Ishii, by contrast, Raducanu looked thoroughly in control of her service games, sending down just a single double-fault and being broken only once. The last time she had defended her serve so effectively was in Washington last summer and Platenik believes she has the talent to be a consistent top 20 player in the world.
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Emma Raducanu’s serve looked much more solid in Miami than it has at other points this year - Getty Images/Carmen Mandato
“I never had a player who improved as fast as Emma,” said Platenik. “We had a hard but good eight or nine days of practice. We worked a bit differently than she was used to, improving a lot specially on footwork positioning.
“We also improved the serve with higher toss, and worked a lot on second serve where she also had a bad toss. Now she can use the kick-serve more and be more aggressive even on second serve
“I really like her progress and I liked the way she played her match in the first round. It was a very clean match technically and tactically. If she can keep stabilising those things we were working on, she can get back into the world’s top 20, but I am always careful about setting limits. If a girl is working there are no limits: look at Mirra Andreeva [the 17-year-old Russian who won both the last two big events in Indian Wells and Dubai].”
Raducanu’s coaching churn explained
Despite Raducanu’s upbeat start to Miami – where she is now due to face eighth seed Emma Navarro on Friday – her decision to dismiss Platenik so swiftly has only revived all the old chatter about her fickle approach to hiring and firing. And that at a time when, after 13 months spent working with childhood ally Nick Cavaday, she had finally seemed to be finding some equilibrium at last.
With the benefit of hindsight, it might have made more sense to continue with locum coaches through the so-called “Sunshine Double” of Indian Wells and Miami, and then try working with Platenik behind closed doors at the National Tennis Centre in south-west London.
That way, he would not have been all over the TV cameras via his courtside appearance in California. And the whole narrative of Raducanu as a serial chopper-and-changer would not have been reactivated so visibly.
Ironically, Raducanu’s trigger-happy approach has only confirmed the suggestion Platenik made in a recent Slovakian interview, in which he said that he had originally considered working with her to be “coaching suicide”. In the same interview, he went on to add that he hoped this was no longer the case now that she had gained maturity and perspective on her astonishing 2021 US Open breakthrough.
As for Raducanu, she has previously ascribed her difficulties in building a settled backroom team to the shortcomings of the coaches she has worked with. “I ask my coaches a lot of questions,” Raducanu said shortly after the departure of Sebastian Sachs – the fifth of her six full-time coaches – in the late summer of 2023. “On certain occasions they haven’t been able to keep up with the questions I’ve asked and maybe that’s why it ended.”
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Emma Raducanu has been unable to forge a long-lasting association with a coach in her young career - PA/Joe Toth
Yet Platenik is not to be taken lightly. In the three years I’ve known him, he has always come across as up-front and straightward: one of the most professional coaches on the tour, with a strong record in player development.
What’s more, the Raducanus knew exactly what they were getting with Platenik, as she had spent a week working with him in 2020. There had even been a couple of earlier attempts to hire him, although contractual agreement had not previously been reached.
Some might question the wisdom of Platenik giving that Slovakian interview to Dennik N a fortnight ago, especially as he was open about his negotiations with Emma’s father Ian, who is someone who prefers to stay in the background.
Yet Ian is understood to have been in Miami over the past week, and to have sounded enthusiastic about the work going on at the practice courts. No, a more plausible explanation may lie in Raducanu’s general mindset.
As Platenik pointed out above, Raducanu is experiencing considerable stress on a number of fronts. This has already been another difficult season for her. Cavaday’s unfortunate departure came just as she thought she had finally assembled the right backroom team, with the experienced Yutaka Nakamura signing up to be her first full-time fitness trainer. And then there was the horrible business with the stalker who pursued her around the entire middle-eastern swing.
Psychologically, Raducanu may not feel ready to establish another deep working relationship with a new coach – which could explain why she has returned to familiar faces once again. Her childhood mentor Jane O’Donoghue was in the player box on Wednesday, alongside Lawn Tennis Association coach Colin Beecher.
Unfortunately, neither O’Donoghue nor Beecher is likely to provide a long-term solution. Raducanu has said before that she sees O’Donoghue – a former Lawn Tennis Association employee who now has a day job in banking – more like a big sister than a coach, while Beecher has multiple other duties to attend to.
Once again, Raducanu’s decision-making is throwing up more questions than answers. As soon as the “Sunshine Double” is over, and she returns to the UK to build for the clay-court season, she will have some serious thinking to do.
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