She promised that she would have a coach in place by the end of the year and now it is confirmed, with Emma Raducanu announcing that German Torben Beltz is to be her new mentor ahead of January’s Australian Open.
The US Open champion has been on the hunt for a new coach since she parted ways with Andrew Richardson who guided her to the incredible triumph at Flushing Meadows in New York. Since then, the young star has seen her form dip but that is, if course, expected of someone still learning their trade on the court. After almost two months of searching for someone to take her game to the next level, she has seen 44-year-old Beltz as the right person to oversee her development.
He links up with the 18-year-old with a strong reputation, having coached the current world No. 17 Angelique Kerber to world No. 1 in 2016, although he first started working with his compatriot back in 2003 when she turned professional. They first parted ways in 2013 after Beltz helped Kerber’s career get off the ground where she won her first Women’s Tennis Association titles: Paris, Copenhagen, and Linz. They rekindled their professional relationship in 2015 and Kerber entered her best years on court.
The duo picked up exactly where they left off and Kerber became champion at Charleston, Stuttgart, Birmingham, and Stanford and these performances then set her up for the pinnacle year of her career. It was 2016 when the then-28-year-old Kerber was at the peak of her game. Beltz helped get her year off to a flying start, pinching the Australian Open crown from reigning champion and then-world No.1 Serena Williams in three sets as she claimed her first Grand Slam title.
The fruitful year was topped with a US Open title, a Wimbledon final and her second victory at Stuttgart, as well as an Olympic silver medal at the Rio Games. After splitting again the following year, as Kerber hired Wim Fissette, Beltz started to work with Croatian Donna Vekić, before returning to work with the three-time Grand Slam winner in 2020.
The experienced coach will have a lot to offer young Raducanu in the next stage of her career, and his record shows how much of an impact he had on Kerber’s game and that is something which excites the Kent teenager.
She said: “It’s obviously a great privilege to be working with such an experienced coach. I’m definitely very excited to work with him throughout the pre-season and into next year so things are looking up and it’s a very, very positive feeling, very excited about all the work that is to come.
“He brings a lot of experience. He’s obviously worked with Kerber who is such a great player and has done extremely well and won three Slams and I think that experience definitely helps with someone as inexperienced as me so he can help guide me through, which I feel really confident about.”
Beltz is known to be a thoughtful and caring mentor which makes him a likeable presence on the WTA Tour. He likes to put a lot of time into the physical work for his players, which Raducanu has made clear the key area she is looking at to improve her game. There is no doubting that it is a promising partnership and it will add some much-needed stability to the Brit’s development - then we still start to see her growth on court. It will take time, though.
