‘I got a brief phone call and that was it’: Andrew Richardson opens up on split with Emma Raducanu

Andrew Richardson is the man who played a central role in one of the greatest sports stories and then disappeared.

The former British player coached Emma Raducanu to her US Open triumph in 2021, was sacked almost immediately afterwards and has thankfully become an elusive figure since that extraordinary performance.

But here he is now on a weekday morning, walking another GB hopeful through her steps on a parched plateau in the hills that rise below the pleasure caves of Benidorm.

An unmarked road leads to the Ferrer Tennis Academy in La Nucia, where a small group of teenagers from all parts of the world look to him as head coach to teach them the tools to one day emulate Raducanu.

Sitting on a picnic bench in the relatively austere surroundings, Richardson smiles modestly as he is reminded of a record unique in his world: a 100% title-winning success rate while coaching a singles player at a Grand slam.

That heady day in New York now seems far away, as it does to the player in his care. Barely a year and a half ago, Raducanu won the US Open, but the harsh reality is that she subsequently dropped out of the top 100 in the world and had three different surgeries at the tender age of 20.

Her choice not to continue with Richardson was a sliding door moment, which has come to resemble the first in a series of missteps and mishaps that have brought her to this point.

Neither he nor she can know how things would have turned out had he been detained at a time when her world was already upside down.

She insisted she find someone more experienced with the tour. Richardson, a giant of genius who doesn’t demand attention, has in the meantime followed his advice, declining the dozens of interview requests that still come his way.

Even now, he goes out of his way not to comment on his earlier charges, but there is one misconception he will clear up. That’s the oft-repeated line that he was unwilling to continue working with Raducanu, wanting instead to run away and coach his eldest son, Rocco, who has set his sights on a tennis career.

“The fact is that I had a nine-week trial contract that both Emma and I thought was a good idea to see how we would progress, and that ran until the end of the US Open and stopped immediately afterwards. ,’ he explains.

“There was a period after that when I really wanted to renegotiate the contract. I wanted to keep going and I had a plan I wanted to carry out for Emma. This thing about “I wanted to leave and coach my son” isn’t true, but it seems to come up all the time.

“After probably ten days to two weeks (after the Open) I had no contract. We were renegotiating and then I got a short call from her agent telling me they were going in a different direction and that was the end of it.’

Richardson understood that the year following her incredible breakthrough would likely be challenging, adapting to her new status and the need to bring in the technical building blocks that are inevitably missing from such a stratospheric rise. The plan would have been aimed at creating a stable environment for her necessary physical development, but it never got off the ground.

The nine-week stretch they had together after 2021 Wimbledon included a tournament road trip from San Francisco to New York via outposts like Pennsylvania’s Landisville before culminating in US Open glory. Richardson, who had worked with her during her formative years, helped her improve week after week and the results were spectacular.

He’s obviously watched from afar since then, but refuses to extend their time together any further, believing the honorable course is that what goes on tour stays on tour. He will not follow in the footsteps of another Raducanu ex-coach, Dmitry Tursunov, who gave a very public assessment of the player after his departure in which he spoke of “red flags” he could not ignore.

“I definitely learned a lot from the whole experience,” says Richardson. “Life has moved on and I’m very busy.”

However, he indicates it was “a difficult period” for him in the aftermath of New York, amid the frenzy of publicity that accompanied a triumph that saw Raducanu nailed Sports Personality of the Year.

These were not things he experienced in his own playing career, in which his left-handed serve, delivered from his 6ft 7in frame, helped him reach the third round of Wimbledon in singles and the top 100 in doubles.

And so he went to ground for a while, prioritizing his family. Charting a way forward was complicated by the fact that one of his sons, 14-year-old Rocco, is serious about becoming a player, while his other son, Rafa, does not have the same interest.

“There were a lot of family logistics to think about, a son changing schools and I had to find a tennis situation that worked for Rocco and I had to find a job. Bringing all that together was quite complicated, and there were still Covid restrictions that made it even more tricky.

“Any parent with a child who takes tennis seriously will recognize that it can be a complicated business and that there are many sacrifices to be made.”

The road would lead to the Ferrer Academy, named after its owner David, the longtime top-10 Spanish player.

Ferrer was all about grafting hard and maximizing his ability, and the no-nonsense academy is molded in his image. Beyond our picnic bench are six clay courts, two small corrugated iron buildings that look like cargo containers, and a marquee used as a gym. La Manga it isn’t, but it exudes the feeling of a place where good work is being done, with a nearby international school catering to students’ educational needs.

“I first came here in October 2021 because I was looking for a place where Rocco could train for a few weeks ahead of some tournaments,” says Richardson. “We liked it and came back in March 2022, and I started helping out a little bit coaching some other kids. It grew from there and in July they offered me the job of head coach.’

His early morning session involved 16-year-old Ava Williamson from Hertfordshire. “We’re not trying to compete with the bigger academies and the idea is to do well with a core group of players aged 11 to 18,” he says. “We have players who are here all year round, and some come for a shorter period of time. We have players from Spain, Mexico, Russia, France, Poland, UK. There are about 24 here at a time.

“Since what happened with Emma, ​​I’ve had offers to tour again, both WTA and ATP. The timing was off, but going back to the tour is definitely something I want to do in the future.

“I have a situation here where my son has the best chance of continuing his tennis, he’s thriving and enjoying it, and we’re also at the start of a project here that’s exciting for me work-wise.”

In late April, he found himself overlapping, ironically, with Raducanu in Madrid. While she pulled out of the major WTA tournament, he was elsewhere in town with his son, who reached the quarterfinals of a junior international event and also made it to the doubles final.

His time in Spain has shown him why the country has been so successful over the past 30 years in producing large numbers of top tennis players, even in a country where padel is a hugely popular alternative.

“In this environment it becomes obvious, and we’re not talking about a Nadal or Alcaraz because they’re so good it would happen anyway,” he says.

“The weather, the clay, the cost, how easy it is to play and compete. Being able to support your child here is so much easier than in the UK. My son can play a tournament in an hour radius around Alicante almost every week of the year, and at a good level.

‘The base of the pyramid is large. There are no barriers to play and the parents are not stressed about whether the kids’ rankings will be good enough to get them into the next decent tournament.

“A kid who doesn’t excel here at 14 still gets a chance to compete and keep going, the late developers aren’t lost, and you end up with a lot of players working their way through the system.” they turn out to be really good in the end. If you don’t excel at a young age in the United Kingdom, for example, that’s a very difficult path.’

Twenty months after his extraordinary two weeks in New York and its aftermath, Richardson seems genuinely pleased with his fate, still drawing from the basics: “I really like coaching, I’ve done it at every level from mini tennis to grand tennis. Slams and for me the fun is always the same: people buy into what you learn and then feel like you’re making a difference and improving them.

‘When that connection is there, I find it very satisfying. I think I can empathize,” says Richardson. “When I got the job with Emma, ​​I thought, ‘Is he a tour-level coach? Some coaches give themselves a title of what type of coach they are. I work in high performance, but I think you can apply the same principles to help everyone.’