Emma Raducanu: ‘I hope Francisco Roig can help me beat the top players’
Emma Raducanu believes her new coaching partnership with Francisco Roig can help to take her game to the next level as she tries to continue her recent rise up the rankings.“First impressions are it’s going really well,” Raducanu said, speaking for the first time about the move in an interview with the Guardian.“We did a few days after Wimbledon together and I was really happy with how it went.I’m just so excited to have him on board, so much experience.I’m really looking forward to continuing.
”With her hiring of Roig, Raducanu has indeed added a wealth of experience to her team,A former player with a career-high singles ranking of No 60 in 1992, Roig came to prominence as a longtime member of Rafael Nadal’s coaching team, working alongside Toni Nadal, Rafael’s uncle and coach, as the Spaniard built one of the greatest careers in the history of professional tennis,Roig himself decided to end his 18-year partnership with Nadal in 2022 and he later briefly coached the injury-prone Italian Matteo Berrettini,Although Raducanu’s numerous coaching changes have been a big narrative in her career, this new appointment comes at a different point in her development,Raducanu has put together a consistent run of quality tennis over the past few months; she is clearly playing with confidence on the court and is in a far more positive place away from the court.
The Briton had been working on an ad hoc basis with Mark Petchey since March but Petchey, who is also a broadcaster, could not fully commit to work with her on a day-to-day basis.The pair remain in close contact.Now at No 33 in the WTA rankings and 26 in the WTA race, a good showing in Cincinnati would lead to her being seeded at a grand slam tournament for the first time since her US Open points fell off.Raducanu, seeded 30th here, has received a first-round bye and will play her opening match on Saturday.After a brief trial period following her run to the third round at Wimbledon this year, Raducanu opted to work with Roig and they have agreed a contract until the end of the year.
She is hopeful that he can help her to take another step forward: “I think I can definitely improve on a lot of my shots, just the quality of them,” Raducanu said.“I think I’ve been good at being creative, scrapping, playing the big points well, but I think the overall quality of my game needs to be better.And I see that when I play the really top players where I can’t run and scrap, wait on them to miss.I think that’s where I need to improve.And yeah, I’m hoping he can help me with that.
”Raducanu and Roig began their partnership with a long day of training on Tuesday, following up her morning sparring session with Rebecca Sramkova of Slovakia with an evening training session on a remote court with only Roig.There was plenty of laughter alongside their high-intensity work.Raducanu then pushed back her media duties by an hour on Wednesday to spend extra time on the practice court and she finished her day with another session.Such is the nature of professional tennis, where players and their team members spend a significant period of time together while travelling on the tour, another challenge for Raducanu and Roig will be to connect on a personal level.The vast Ohio roads may prove to be an icebreaker between them.
At Cincinnati, the seeded players are given cars to drive to and from the tournament venue.“I actually drove from the airport,” the 22-year-old said.“I didn’t know I had a car, so I landed, and they were like: ‘Oh, you have a car,’ and it’s this massive Cadillac Escalade.So I’m like: ‘This is like a bus’.Obviously in England, we’re used to driving small cars, small roads, so I was a bit tight.
Wrong side of the road as well.But it’s OK.I managed to get to the hotel.”Since then, Raducanu has handed over driving responsibilities to Roig.As with his coaching capabilities, her first impressions of his driving skills are positive: “So far so good,” she said, smiling.
“It’s been tested too, in the dark, in the rain, in the sun.It’s fine.”
UK car drivers: share your memories and photos of your convertible
According to a new study, convertibles have dwindled to a 25-year low with only 16 new models for sale across the UK’s most popular car manufacturers. SUVs are taking the rap for the decline of convertibles in Britain as people move towards favouring bulkier vehicles.Data from CarGurus UK found that in 2024 there were only 12,173 new convertibles registered in the UK compared to 94,484 in 2004. One of cinema’s most iconic cars is probably the 1966 Ford Thunderbird convertible that Thelma and Louise drove on their their adventures.We would like to hear from people who have, or previously had, a convertible
OpenAI in talks on share sale that would price it above Elon Musk’s SpaceX
OpenAI is reportedly in early talks about a sale of shares held by current and former employees that would value it at half a trillion dollars, overtaking Elon Musk’s SpaceX.If the transaction goes ahead, the value of the ChatGPT developer would rise by about two-thirds, from $300bn (£225bn).Musk’s rocket companyis currently worth $350bn and is reportedly circling a $400bn price tag in a new fundraising.Bloomberg, which first reported the OpenAI talks, said existing investors, including Thrive Capital, have approached the company about buying employee shares. Other investors in OpenAI, which is based in San Francisco, include the Japanese investment company SoftBank, which led the $300bn financing, and Microsoft
Lib Dems call for urgent regulation of YouTube ads after wave of scams
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OpenAI takes on Meta and DeepSeek with free and customisable AI models
OpenAI is taking on Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and Chinese rival DeepSeek by launching its own freely available artificial intelligence models.The ChatGPT developer has announced two “open weight” large language models, which are free to download and can be customised by developers.Meta’s Llama models are available on a similar basis, and OpenAI’s move marks a departure from ChatGPT, which is based on a “closed” model that cannot be customised.Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, said the company was excited to add to a stack of freely available AI models “based on democratic values … and for wide benefit”.He added: “We’re excited to make this model, the result of billions of dollars of research, available to the world to get AI into the hands of the most people possible
Tech’s trillion-dollar binge, Palantir’s empire and women’s privacy under attack
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. This week, tech companies are spending amounts of money that stretch the limits of the imagination. Donald Trump’s administration is spending more money with data analytics and surveillance firm Palantir. And women on both sides of the Pacific face the extreme difficulty of keeping intimate moments private online.In last week’s edition of the newsletter, my colleagues wrote about the upshot of Google’s earnings call: lots of money earned, but, more importantly lots of money spent on AI
Tesla shareholders sue Elon Musk for allegedly hyping up faltering Robotaxi
Tesla shareholders sued Elon Musk and the electric vehicle maker for allegedly concealing the significant risk posed by company’s self-driving vehicles.The proposed class-action suit, which accuses Musk and Tesla of securities fraud, was filed on Monday night. Tesla conducted its first public test of its self-driving taxis in late June near the company’s headquarters in Austin, Texas. That test showed the vehicles speeding, braking suddenly, driving over a curb, entering the wrong lane and dropping off passengers in the middle of multilane roads. The National Highway Transit Safety Administration (NHTSA), the main transportation regulator in the US, is investigating the Robotaxi’s pilot test
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