RAONIC ROARS INTO FINAL
Canadian to face Andy Murray for Wimbledon title
Milos Raonic was thrilled to have his parents sitting courtside at Wimbledon on Friday when he was making history by becoming the first Canadian man to advance to a Grand Slam singles final.
He’s also very happy his parents knew next to nothing about tennis when he was growing up in Thornhill, Ont.
“They have always driven me to tennis, they’ve picked me up from practice, all these kind of things,” Raonic said after recovering from a 2-1 deficit to beat 17-time major winner Roger Federer 6-3, 6-7 (3), 4-6, 7-5, 6-3 on Centre Court. “They tried to be the best they can. But even to this day, they have not given me a piece of advice when it comes to my game.”
Parents of young athletes — and tennis parents have a reputation for being among the worst — might want to read that paragraph over again. Raonic’s parents, Dusan and Vesna, are engineers, not athletes.
“I can probably maybe remember one weekend where they played on the local courts that I watched,” Raonic said when asked if his parents ever played the game. “Other than that, I doubt it.”
But that doesn’t mean Raonic’s parents didn’t play a key role in his rise to No. 7 in the world rankings — or the fact he can make Canadian sports history Sunday, when he faces Great Britain’s Andy Murray in the Wimbledon final (9 a.m., TSN, RDS) on the grandest stage in tennis.
The only other Canadian to make it to a Grand Slam singles final was Westmount, Que.’s Eugenie Bouchard, two years ago at Wimbledon, where she was blown out 6-3, 6-0 by the Czech Republic’s Petra Kvitova.
Raonic will face a big challenge against Murray, who will have a huge home-court advantage in front of his tennis-crazed countrymen. Murray has won six of their previous nine meetings, including a 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-3 win over Raonic in the final of the Queen’s Club grass-court tuneup tournament last month.
“He does a lot of things well,” Raonic said of Murray. “I think the biggest challenge for me, which I felt was the thing I want to happen the least — or repeat itself the least from Queen’s — is I got sucked into his game. I didn’t play on my terms. That’s going to be the most important thing for me.”
An important lesson Raonic seems to have learned from his parents is to surround himself with the best people to help him improve. To that end, he added John McEnroe as a third coach before last month’s French Open to join Riccardo Piatti and Carlos Moya. Raonic knew he needed to improve both his net and mental game if he wanted to win at Wimbledon after losing 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 to Federer in the semifinals here two years ago.
McEnroe is also doing TV work here and was in the broadcast booth for Raonic’s semifinal match. With his student down 2-1 heading into the fourth set, McEnroe told his TV audience: “We’re going to find out what Raonic is made of.”
We certainly did — and it’s some really good Canadian stuff.
“I did a lot of things well,” Raonic said.
“The attitude kept me in the match. I think that’s what made the biggest difference. I was quite vocal, but I was always positive. I was always looking for a solution. Two years ago (against Federer) I bottled up all the difficulties I had on court and never got it out.
“Today I found a way to keep plugging away, keep myself in the match, then sort of turn it around. I was quite more vocal and a lot more positive on court.”
It’s hard to question Raonic’s work ethic or his drive.
His introduction to tennis came when he was eight and his parents signed him up for a March break spring camp. The next year, he remembers trying out for a tennis program in Toronto, but the coach told him he wasn’t good enough.
So Raonic’s father got him a ball machine and they would go to the local courts early in the morning or late at night so he could practise.
“Me and my father started on the ball machine every morning at 6 in the morning and 9 at night, because that’s when court fees were affordable enough for us,” Raonic recalled.
“That’s when they gave us a deal. I remember that ball machine pretty well.”
Raonic would hit ball after ball while his father would go around the court picking them up to feed the machine over and over again.
“I wouldn’t stop for two hours,” Raonic said. “I wouldn’t take any steps. I was very lazy. I would hit tennis balls from the standing position for two hours. He would walk around and keep filling up the machine so I wouldn’t have to stop.”
If Raonic wins Sunday, that ball-machine story could become as famous as the one about the dryer a young Sidney Crosby used to shoot pucks at in his parents’ basement in Cole Harbour, N.S.