👋 Welcome back to The Daily Theory, our morning rundown to help you stay on top of your favorite sport. I’m Allen McDuffee, your guide to all things tennis.

On tap today, we’ve got: Emma Raducanu sends another coach packing, Venus Williams keeps us guessing, Carlos Alcaraz rejects the PTPA suit, Learner Tien takes on Joao Fonseca, plus more in tennis news.

Let’s tennis!

Three Points

🎾 Another one goes down: Emma Raducanu has fired another coach from her team. That makes eight in less than four years, by The Athletic’s count. This time, Vladimir Platenik — a former coach of Daria Kasatkinka, Lulu Sun, and Dominika Cibulkova — believed he was hired on a trial basis through Roland-Garros. Instead, the relationship lasted just a single match.

  • What they said: “Emma has the utmost respect for Vlado and the work they started but it wasn’t quite heading in the right direction,” per an IMG rep.
  • The message: When you switch coaches as often as Emma Raducanu does, often firing them after just a few weeks, the better coaches clue in pretty quickly as to where the problem lies — and their incentive to take on what is viewed as a problematic pupil plummets very quickly.

🎾 What is going on with Venus?: The short answer is: your guess is as good as mine. But there are a few interesting data points in the playing status of the 44-year-old, who will lose all of her ranking points at the conclusion of the Miami Open. First, we know about the Indian Wells wild card debacle. The BBC is reporting that she was then offered a wild card at the Miami Open and considered it before turning it down. And then, she turned up for a practice session with Ons Jabeur on Wednesday.

🎾 In the dark: Carlos Alcaraz made it clear on Wednesday that he doesn’t support the PTPA lawsuit filed this week, noting that he knew nothing about it ahead of time and only learned about it on social media. Although he didn’t come right out and say it, he seemed somewhat annoyed that his previous words were used in the legal filing without any warning by the PTPA to make their case.

  • What he said: “Yesterday, I saw on social media that they put something I said in a press conference in the documents, and I wasn’t aware of it. I honestly don’t support that letter because I wasn’t aware of it,” Alcaraz said during press on Wednesday. “There are some things that I agree (with). There are some other things that I (don’t) agree with...But the main thing here is that I am not supporting that. So that’s it.”