Emma Raducanu has everything in place for success this season, while Jack Draper must prove his body is up to the demands – it’s a make-or-break year for Britain’s two brightest tennis stars, writes MATTHEW LAMBWELL
As Emma Raducanu and Jack Draper – joined by their status as British No1s, separated by 9,000 miles of land and ocean – watched the New Year fireworks split the skies, perhaps both reflected that the cracks and bangs announced the start of a make or break year.
These two have known each other since they could barely peep over a tennis net. Eleven months apart in age, they have always been bound together as the brightest lights of British tennis. For both of them, 2026 will be pivotal but for very different reasons. In a sense, they have swapped roles – for Raducanu, with everything in place for success, it is time to prove she can raise herself somewhere close to the top of the sport, as Draper did in 2024 and the first half of last year. For Draper, the equation is simpler, as it was for Raducanu in 2025: he simply has to show he can stay fit.
Let us begin in Perth, where Raducanu is leading Team GB in the United Cup, effectively a tune-up event before the first Grand Slam of the year in Melbourne. For the first time in her career, we can definitively say that the 23-year-old has everything in place for a successful season.
Most importantly, she has a coach who should break the mould of previous Raducanu mentors and last the distance. Francisco Roig ticks all the boxes. He has a blue-chip track record: 18 years in the inner sanctum of Rafael Nadal.
His coaching style also figures to be an ideal fit for Raducanu. During last year’s US Open, Daily Mail Sport spoke to Jordi Vilaro, the co-founder of Roig’s BTT Academy in Barcelona and he explained the 57-year-old’s philosophy. Roig thinks traditional tennis teaching can lead to a player wasting energy in stop-start movements; he believes, instead, that the game should be played in constant motion, running towards the ball and striking it becoming almost one movement.
British No1s Emma Raducanu and Jack Draper face pivotal 2026 seasons – but for different reasons with the pair appearing to have swapped roles
Raducanu trusts her coach Francisco Roig, who could help her to hit peak level this season
Anyone who watched Raducanu fly to the 2021 US Open title will recognise this. She was playing in a state of flow and in many ways her career since then has been a search to rediscover that; Roig could be the man to provide the map.
Perhaps most importantly, Raducanu trusts him. As she told Daily Mail Sport in Rome last year, that is not an emotion which comes easily to her. From Dimitri Tursunov to Vlado Platenik, several past Raducanu coaches have broken her confidence by blabbing in public. Roig kept Nadal’s counsel for almost two decades and he keeps it still, proving to Raducanu that he is a man for whom their conversations will not go beyond the two of them.
Roig aside, Raducanu has her physical team in place, too, with eccentric Frenchman Jerome Poupel – of Formula 1 and horseracing experience (he treated the horses, not the jockeys) – and Emma Stewart, who worked with British rowing’s gold-medal winning Paris 2024 team.
There are no excuses now; no reason why Raducanu cannot hit her peak level this season.
Draper, meanwhile, is where Raducanu has so often been in her brief career thus far: in the midst of injury woe and with a new coach in situ.
Midway through last season Draper looked like the coming force in men’s tennis; the man best placed to make the Big Two into a triumvirate. But bone bruising in his mighty left arm has put him out for months and still he is not ready to compete in Australia.
Unfortunately, this is far from an isolated problem. Ever since a dramatic growth spurt in his mid-teens, Draper has struggled to stay fit for long. Shoulder problems, hip pain that sounds worryingly chronic and now this. It is time for his recently-assembled fitness team of Matt Little and Shane Annun – both alumni of team Andy Murray – to earn their crust.
Draper has proved he can compete at the top level but has endured fitness problems, with the latest being bone bruising in his left arm which has kept him on the sidelines for months
Draper split with long-term coach James Trotman last year, adding another complication for the British star moving forwards
Draper has shown in rising to No4 in the world that he has the game to carry on the departed Scot’s legacy in British tennis. Now he must prove he has the body to allow him to do so.
Another complication for Draper is that he has parted ways with his long-time coach James Trotman, a split at least partly down to the LTA man’s desire to spend more time with his young family.
The replacement is yet another former Murray man, Jamie Delgado. The Englishman was last seen coaxing a late-career flourish out of Grigor Dimitrov and is a top operator but Draper and Trotman had a close, almost familial bond and that will take time to replicate.
So plenty of question marks for Draper then; for Raducanu, just the one: with everything in place for her success, how good can she be?
