(Tennis news) US Open champion Emma Raducanu has confirmed that 44 year old German Torben Beltz will be her new coach for the 2022 season, starting with the Australian Open that begins on January 17th. The 18 year old parted ways with Andrew Richardson following her triumph at the Flushing Meadows and has been on a hunt for a more experienced coach since.
Speaking after her defeat to China’s Wang Xinyu in Linz, Emma Raducanu said “It's obviously a great privilege to be working with such an experienced coach. I'm definitely very excited to work with him throughout the pre-season and into next year so things are looking up and it's a very, very positive feeling, very excited about all the work that is to come. He brings a lot of experience.
“He's obviously worked with Kerber who is such a great player and has done extremely well and won three Slams and I think that experience definitely helps with someone as inexperienced as me so he can help guide me through, which I feel really confident about. Also he's a really positive, cheerful guy who brings great energy to the team so I think that's also important when you're travelling on the road for quite a long time on the tour."
Having previously been a long term coach for Angelique Kerber, Torben Beltz is known for his likeable and compassionate personality rather than being a hard taskmaster. He was Kerber’s coach for a decade and helped her reach the top 10 rankings before their first split in 2013. However, the pair was reunited for the majority of the 2016 season when Kerber won the Australian Open, US Open, reached the Wimbledon finals, won the silver medal at the Rio Olympics and finished the season as World No. 1.
Their second split came in 2017 when Kerber replaced Beltz with Wim Fissette, winning the Wimbledon title that year. Meanwhile, Beltz worked with Croatian Donna Vekic, helping her reach the top 20 for the first time. Beltz was reunited with Kerber again last year, reaching the Wimbledon semi-finals and returning to the top 10 for a short time. The 33 year old confirmed this week that she had parted ways with Beltz yet again with the German teaming up with Raducanu for the 2022 season.
