Raducanu in no rush to find new full-time coach

Raducanu has confirmed she has no immediate plans to hire a full-time coach and will focus her efforts on finding a suitable sparring partner in the wake of her split with German mentor Torben Beltz. The US Open champion announced on Tuesday she would no longer be working with Beltz, a former coach of three-time major winner Angelique Kerber, and told reporters at the Madrid Open on Wednesday that hiring someone to hit with during practice is a top priority at the moment.

Raducanu said the decision to part ways with Beltz after just five months had been brewing for "the last few weeks" and explained he was the right person to team up with this past period as he helped her adjust to life on tour. In her statement announcing the split with Beltz, Raducanu said she plans "to transition to a new training model, with the LTA supporting in the interim." She is accompanied by LTA coach Iain Bates in Madrid.

Raducanu has gone through a number of coaches in the past year since she first made her mark in reaching the last 16 at Wimbledon, even before she had received her final school exam results. She replaced Nigel Sears with Andrew Richardson after Wimbledon, but Richardson's contract was not renewed despite Raducanu's stunning success in New York.

"Going forward I'll probably be putting a lot more emphasis on sparring; I feel like that's definitely something that's becoming more apparent to me as I spend more time on the tour, is just getting used to these girls' ball speed," said Raducanu, who opens her Madrid campaign against Czech Republic's Tereza Martincova on Friday. "I felt like against Iga (Swiatek), in my quarter-final match in Stuttgart, I was just trying to get used to the ball speed the first few games and had a bit