Madison Keys is enjoying another successful US Open run under the guidance of her boyfriend Bjorn Fratangelo. The pair have been together since 2017 and recently made their relationship professional as Fratangelo started helping his fiancee on the coaching front earlier this summer. But Laura Robson revealed that the world No 17 was planning to drop him for a new, long-term coach.
Keys raised her consistency this summer, winning the title in Eastbourne and reaching back-to-back Grand Slam quarter-finals at Wimbledon and the US Open. A former finalist in Flushing Meadows, the American is now hoping to keep her run going when she faces Marketa Vondrousova on Wednesday.
The 28-year-old will be able to count on the advice of her boyfriend during the match, as Fratangelo started working with Keys ahead of the grass season after she spent the clay swing travelling alone. But the 17th seed is already planning to fire her partner before the end of the season.
Discussing their new coaching relationship on Sky Sports, retired pro Laura Robson said: “I should also add that the partnership with Bjorn as coach is not long-term. For the sake of their relationship, she is looking for someone else to finish the year off with.”
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Fratangelo himself is a former top 100 tennis player but is currently sidelined with injuries. During his time away from the match court, the 30-year-old has thrown himself into the role of coaching his soon-to-be-wife. The pair became engaged earlier this year but Robson said that wedding planning wasn’t getting in the way of their player-coach partnership.
She added: “It’s not until next year the wedding, end of next year. So they’ve got plenty of time just to focus on the tennis for now. But they just get on so well and for Bjorn to have the experience of being in the top 100 himself, he’s currently injured but he can still hit up and down the middle perfectly fine.
“So he’s been doing all of her match warm-ups, all of the scouting, he’s been watching a lot of women’s tennis over the last six months. But I just feel like they’ve got that connection from the side of the court where he knows when to say something, he knows when to give her a little bit of tactical advice when she needs it and also when to back off which, when you’ve been together for so many years, you just know what to do.”
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Keys herself has been impressed with the insight that her boyfriend has offered her before and during matches, as he can often be heard encouraging her from the sidelined. “He does a lot of homework and I think having the element of being a player himself, he sees a lot of things and is not afraid to be chatty. So he’s willing to give me the information whenever I need it,” the 2017 US Open runner-up said.
And the seven-time title winner could find herself in a tricky situation if she ends up winning her home Grand Slam tournament with the help of Fratangelo. “If she wins here I’m pretty sure they’ll continue no matter what,” Martina Navratilova said of Keys’ plans to fire her boyfriend.
“And the seating arrangements at a wedding are much more stressful than playing a match so they need to work that out.”
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