Emma Raducanu has breezed through to the second round of the Transylvania Open in her first match since splitting from coach Francis Roig.
On January 29, Raducanu announced that she was parting ways with Roig – eight days after a tame Australian Open second-round exit to Anastasia Potapova.
The 23-year-old had hired Roig, Rafael Nadal’s former coach, last August and agreed in December to extend it by a further 12 months.
However, the Brit has since had a change of heart and is on the lookout for a 10th coach already in her short career – announcing so on Instagram.
But on Monday, the 2021 US Open champion showed her class with a comfortable straight-sets win over Belgium’s Greet Minnen.
Raducanu, who has former British player Alexis Canter as her coach in Romania, lived up to her billing as the No 1 seed at this tournament with a 6-0, 6-4 victory over Minnen.
Playing in Cluj-Napoca for the first time in five years, Raducanu won the opening set 6-0 in a devastating 25 minutes of action.
The world No 30 then broke her opponent in the third game of the second set, as she held out to win that 6-4 to take the match.
Raducanu will face Slovenia’s Kaja Juvan, ranked 97 in the world, on Wednesday.
Reflecting on her victory, Raducanu was delighted with the manner of her performance.
‘I’m very happy today. I think I played a great match from the beginning. I was super aggressive and the crowd from the minute I walked out was incredible,’ she said during her on-court interview.
‘I think today was a great performance. I wanted to put my game out on the court and it’s a little bit easier indoors so I’m really pleased I could kind of use that.
‘I played a really tricky opponent in Greet, who really starts the point well, so I knew I had to do the same and pleased that I stayed with it.’
It is unclear when Raducanu will name a permanent successor to Roig.
After this week’s tournament in Romania, she will travel to the Middle East for the WTA 1000 tournaments in Doha (February 8-14) and Dubai (February 16-22) before competing at Indian Wells and the Miami Open in March.
