After constantly changing her service motion last year, British tennis star Emma Raducanu ended the season by seemingly increasing both her first and second serve speeds with the aim of making her first serve into a more lethal weapon and fortifying her second serve. If we go by the numbers, she hit 109 aces last year in 31 matches and won 68.9% of her service games. She had previously worked with her former coach Nick Cavaday to improve her serve for the 2025 season. However, in her first tournament of this season, i.e., the AO, she hit 10 aces but committed 24 double faults! After her first match against Ekaterina Alexandrova, she was heard joking that her serve had a “mind of its own“. But in her recent match, against Jil Teichmann in the R64 of the Italian Open, Raducanu hammered six aces, committing just two double faults! Has she made any changes to her serve recently, then?
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Previously, after seeing Emma Raducanu’s performances in Madrid, former British tennis player Colin Fleming claimed, “She’s gone back to her more natural service motion since working with Mark Petchey recently. She has done a bit of work with Nick Cavaday [former coach] on adjusting the motion. She’s always had a natural, flowing, rhythmic service motion, and it became a bit more abbreviated with the work under Cavaday. I understand why! Trying to get the serve bigger, more impactful during matches. It’s back to that longer, flowing rhythm.” Even Jim Courier noted that Raducanu’s new part-time coach, Petchey, has already changed her service motion by adding more shoulder turns in order to give her a little bit more disguise and a little more power.
Now, after seeing her performance in her previous match where she defeated Teichmann by 6-2,6-2, her improvement in the serve didn’t go unnoticed. Later on during her on-court interview with Sky Sports, she was asked if she had made any changes to her serve recently. In reply to that, Raducanu said, “If you look at my serve now compared to Australia, compared to the Middle East, even Miami, I changed it after Miami with some tweaks and it’s a completely different motion. I’m trying to make it a bit more fluid, a bit longer, so it’s hopefully more robust under pressure, but it’s by no means a finished product.”
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She further added, “I feel there’s so much more room to grow it. I think this way I can maximize the potential.” The clay court has never been a happy hunting ground for Emma Raducanu, and she even admitted her “love-hate” relationship with this surface in a later interview with Tennis Channel. But she feels she’s slowly finding her feet here.
This was just her third match on clay this season and only the 20th of her entire career. Next up for her is Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova. What else have the experts noticed when it comes to changes in her game?
“She Was Aggressive” – Emma Raducanu Gets Praised for His Dominating Performance in the R64 of the Italian Open
Despite having limited experience on clay, Emma Raducanu‘s impressive performance in Rome has now become the talk of the town. It’s in fact just the second time that she has reached the third round of a WTA 1000 clay-court event. Other than her serve, what are the key changes that Raducanu might have just brought to her game, which led her to her recent success on clay?
According to the 50-year-old former British tennis player, Miles Maclagan, Emma Raducanu was really impressive in her previous match. Highlighting her positive approach in this match, he further added, “She was aggressive, kept her foot on the pedal throughout on a day when things could have got tricky. She’ll take some stopping if she continues that kind of form.“
On the other hand, the former Wimbledon champion, Marion Bartoli, said, “I think she’s moving better, which is crucial on clay. The surface is lively, and you’re sliding all over the place, so you need to get your legs extremely strong. You need to feel the ground really well and when I look at her muscle from the lower body she has been really putting in the work in the gym, which is probably why she decided to take a break after Miami to get those hours in the gym to make sure she was physically ready for the clay and grass too.”
She also explained how Mark Petchey’s experience can bring more calmness to Emma Raducanu’s camp. However, amid all these, just a few days ago Raducanu admitted that she believes her current coaching arrangement is working well, but at the same time, she feels she needs to “figure another solution out,” because at the moment Petchey also has commentary commitments which he needs to fulfill during the Tour. However, despite his absence at the Italian Open, his effort to improve Raducanu’s serve was reflected in her previous match. Do you think the Brit can fire more aces in her next match?
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Edited by
Irfan Kabeer