Raonic, bruised and battered, runs out of gas
It wasn’t the stunner of Roger Federer sent packing after blowing match point and a two-set lead over Kevin Anderson.
It wasn’t the hellfire five-set siege that ended with winner Rafael Nadal and loser Juan Martin del Potro wrapping their arms around each other in an exhausted embrace.
It wasn’t, for those casting their eyes elsewhere, the crushing heartbreak of England denied its first World Cup final in more than half a century, thwarted by Croatia.
But on a day of wall-to-wall sports drama, the shadow of might-have-been fell cruelly across Canada’s Milos Raonic at Wimbledon.
Amidst all that other sports-craft, on Court 1 of the All-England Club, the 27-year-old from Thornhill endured agony of his own, victimized for the umpteenth time by an injury that left him labouring through much of a four- set quarterfinal against American John Isner on Wednesday. Sunset duel of the big servers. Aces at 80 paces. And if Raonic won the blast-o-rama contest — 31 aces to Isner’s 25 — the six-foot-10 Yank was unbreakable.
One break-point opportunity was all the Canadian was afforded and he couldn’t convert, while Isner was 3for-6 on his break chances, the last one nailed in the deciding game of the encounter when Raonic was clearly playing on fumes, hand constantly reaching down to massage his throbbing right thigh.
Ninety-five consecutive holds for Isner, the only player never broken at the 132nd edition of Wimbledon.
“It feels like a tear of the muscle,” Raonic told reporters following his 6-7(5), 7-6(7), 6-4, 6-3 defeat. “I don’t know to what extent. That’s sort of the sensation I had.”
He felt the searing ache in his first-set service game and a trainer was called to wrap the thigh tightly. But the ailment — only the latest in a litany of injuries that have so frequently sidelined Raonic in his career — clearly worsened as the match progressed. Obviously aware of his hobbled opponent’s discomfort, Isner tormented him with shots aimed low, volleys and half-volleys, forcing Raonic to dip painfully deep on returns, on each occasion visibly hurting, wincing and grimacing on every stride.
Isner was ruthless. Raonic would have done the same.
Whatever the specific injury, it plagued Raonic most particularly on his bullet service game, just 53 per cent on his second serve as the holds became increasingly harrowing. Half a dozen double faults. Isner was a rather stupendous, 90 per cent on his first serve.
“There wasn’t many chances,” said Raonic, who had been bidding to make his fourth Grand Slam semi. “As long as I could hold it, I tried to. Just sort of kept slipping away from me slowly.’’
The crucial juncture came in the second-set tiebreaker when, serving at 3-all, Raonic sent a forehand from the baseline sailing past the line. That put Isner into a mini-break, though he immediately gifted Raonic right back. Then Isner scratched out another chance with a blistering winner off a misguided Raonic serve and volley, earning the set-point chancer and capitalizing with a booming unretrievable serve to draw level at a set apiece.
Momentum manifestly shifted to the American from then on. Making his 41st Grand Slam appearance — the 33-year-old had never progressed this far at SW19 before — Isner’s selfconfidence plainly burgeoned, repeatedly putting Raonic on his back foot.
To this point, the native of Greensboro, N.C., was most famously known around Wimbledon for enduring the longest match in tennis history — a five-set 2010 marathon versus Frenchman Nicolas Mahut that went to 70-68 in the fifth set after 11 hours spread over three days, Isner ultimately prevailing.
“Certainly this tournament, since that long match, has sort of been a house of horror for me,” Isner had said earlier. “I’ve lost a lot of close ones since that match, a lot of very, very close ones, a lot of deep five-set matches, third round especially.’’
Many had expected this match to go a boom-boom full five, a heavy metal tennis ser- vice battle decided in tiebreaks. Though seeded 13th to Isner’s No. 9, Raonic had the tiebreak edge, 22-18 this year, 11-5 for Isner. Yet they split the two tiebreaks on Wednesday and Raonic seemed to lose heart after dropping the second set, while simultaneously contending with his injury.
He’d said, ahead of the match, that his most significant advantage against the rarity of a taller opponent with a fearsome wingspan was playmaking agility; he moves better on the court, and they’d both scramble to make small margin points. But that edge went up the spout early.
In his gut, said Raonic, he knew the point of no return was when he went down a break in the fourth, trailing two sets to one. “Before that, I can hope to hold, try to put a few things here together, play maybe a good return point or two in the tiebreak, maybe take care of my serve. But once I got behind a break, it was going to be tough.’’
The rallies were predictably short, Raonic struggling to retrieving those low liners. “Any time I got low. There wasn’t much going on from the baseline or the net. It was only going down for one shot. To sort of transfer the weight, to be able to jump to my serve, because I was doing that every single point I was serving. That was the toughest part.”
In front of a sparse crowd — attendance thinning out after the defending champion was upset by South African Kevin Anderson, who’d never before taken even one set off the Federer Express — Isner was evidently the gallery’s favourite. Perhaps even Raonic’s coach, Goran Ivanisevic, 2001 Wimbledon champion, from Croatia, would have preferred to be watching the World Cup semifinal rather than what was unfolding before him.
The outcome for Raonic, a finalist at Wimbledon two years ago, was especially disappointing given how the top seed dominoes have fallen, with marquee players in his bracket ousted in the early strokes of the tournament. He hadn’t faced a ranked player through four rounds.
But it’s Isner who will play on, finally breaking through, booked into the semifinal against Anderson while a rebooted Novak Djokovic, winner over Kei Nishikori, will have to grapple next with Nadal.
Raonic has been knocking at that Grand Slam door for a long time. His day, he has no doubt, will come.
“That’s what I work for, yeah. That’s why I put in the efforts and the sacrifices, the sweat, the frustrations and all the good things. And I have fun doing it. That’s what I do it for, to have that opportunity, and hopefully make something out of it.”