Emma Raducanu’s coaching trial with Vladimir Platenik is over after just two weeks.
The British number two won her Miami Open first-round match against Japanese teenager Sayaka Ishii in straight sets on Wednesday.
However, Platenik was absent from her coaching box, having flown to California two days before Raducanu’s first-round defeat by Moyuka Uchijima in Indian Wells earlier this month.
The two had been training together in the run-up to this week’s tournament, but the brief trial ended on Tuesday.
It was Raducanu’s decision – the 22-year-old’s representatives say she has the “utmost respect” for Platenik but the relationship “wasn’t quite heading in the right direction”.
The 49-year-old recently gave an outspoken interview to the Slovak newspaper Dennik N, in which he suggested they had a tentative agreement to work together until May’s French Open.
Platenik, who has worked previously with Daria Kasatkina and Dominika Cibulkova, is highly rated as a coach.
But one former player described him as a “freight train” – saying he was full of intensity and self-confidence, with a personality that was not always easy to handle.
Raducanu did not seem affected on court as she beat Ishii 6-2 6-1 and will face the American eighth seed Emma Navarro in the second round on Friday.
Jane O’Donoghue, a friend who has worked with Raducanu on an ad-hoc basis over the past couple of years, was in the coaching box alongside Colin Beecher – who runs the LTA’s National Tennis Centre in London.
Raducanu said in Indian Wells that Platenik was “very serious and very professional”, but stressed it was too early to know how they would get on both on and off the court.
They had some previous experience together, having worked for two weeks on a trial basis when Raducanu was 17.
The 2021 US Open champion has been without a permanent coach since Nick Cavaday stood down for health reasons after January’s Australian Open.
Raducanu had previously worked with a wide range of coaches including Nigel Sears, Andrew Richardson – who was in charge during her run to the title in New York – Torben Beltz, Dmitry Tursunov and Sebastian Sachs.
