Emma Raducanu brings back old coach temporarily ahead of Nottingham Open

Emma Raducanu will play later today at the Nottingham Open, but it wasn't Nick Cavaday in her corner prior to her clash against Ena Shibahara which is set for later on Tuesday afternoon. Albeit it is not the case of her coaching merry go round continuing.

Cavaday is currently unwell and so cannot be with her in Nottingham at least prior to the tournament. So she has instead counted on Jane O'Donoghue to help her through who as well as LTA employee Mark Hilton.

Raducanu has spent the first six months working with Cavaday in the continuity that she needs amid a prior coaching merry go round which initially saw her go for big names coaches which didn't really work such as Dmitry Tursunov and Torben Beltz.

But at the start of the year, it was very much back to basics and she went back to her schooldays to work with a previous ally who guided her development at the Bromley Tennis Centre between the ages of 10-12. Cavaday though was seen only training with Raducanu last week giving credence to the illness reasoning. The Times reported that he would likely make it to her first match on Tuesday.

But O'Donoghue has been there in the mean time. She was the LTA National Coach for Women between 2009-2019 and spent a week with Raducanu in Auckland before a decision was made about Cavaday. She also guided her Wimbledon campaign in 2022. But has almost left tennis behind with a day job working for Santander.

Raducanu has been working hard in the past few weeks with the Brit deciding to shirk the French Open in order to give her all to the grass court season. Shibahara awaits early on who came through qualifying which will be the real test.

"It’s important for me to keep laying on the foundations and I will put in a healthy block [of training] before the grass and subsequent hard court seasons to give myself a chance to keep fit for the rest of the year," she said in a statement earlier in the season regarding her decision to skip the clay court major to go onto grass.