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Raonic 'progress report'

2K views 15 replies 12 participants last post by  justafanYYC 
#1 ·
Like many Canadians, I'm a huge fan of Milos Raonic and am grateful for the excitement he has brought to Canadian tennis. Also, like many Canadians, I find myself getting impatient for him to make greater inroads in tournaments and in the rankings, even though he's already had some incrdible wins and his game is improving all the time.
I checked the rankings of all of the players currently ranked higher than Milos when they were his age (approx. 21 years, 1.5 months) and I found some interesting things.

Current rank, name, rank at age 21 y, 1.5 m
27, Stan Wawrinka, 56
26, Marcel Granollers, 162
25, Juan Ignacio Chela, 56
24, Fernando Verdasco, 36
23, Marin Cilic, 14
22, Viktor Troicki, 172
21, Florian Mayer, 35
20, Kei Nishikori, 68
19, Andy Roddick, 2
18, Alexandr Dolgopolov Jr, 131
17, John Isner, 959
16, Richard Gasquet, 8
15, Felician Lopez, 62
14, Robin Soderling, 62
13, Gael Monfils, 41
12, Gilles Simon, 80
11, Nicolas Almagro, 38
10, Juan Martin Del Potro, 5
9, Janko Tipsarevic, 115
8, Mardy Fish, 67
7, Tomas Berdych, 10
6, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, 262
5, David Ferrer, 61
4, Andy Murray, 11
3, Roger Federer, 13
2, Rafael Nadal, 2
1, Novak Djokovic, 3

Any thoughts? I think when Milos improves his return and backhand, he'll be a force to be reckoned with. What do you think?
 
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#3 ·
From what I have seen of the guy he has a long way to go. His movement is suspect. You have to improve your movement before you start working on any particular shot. You need to be able to get in position in good time in order to hit any shot well. Some are born with great movement but most work at it. He does have talent but as we all know it is a long way to the top if you wanna rock 'n' roll :worship:. Bumping off Murray, Nadal and the Djoker will take someone special, Raonic is special but not that special. I hope I'm wrong but of course I'm never wrong :superlol:.
 
#4 ·
It's not only the return. His weakness has been the return mostly though. But he needs to improve not only his backhand but the forehand too. He can dictate points indoors with forehands if he has already set it up with a good serve. It's a good I'd say a top 15-20 shot. Backhand has improved a lot over the last 10 months. Footwork has never been a problem as he is a natural mover.
So with a bit better baseline game he could crack top 15 in a few months. It's pretty much of a nonsense speculating about rankings but he definetely can cause some damage in the coming weeks. Good chance to defend his title down there in San Jose and a great one to win his first 500 event in Memphis. Not expecting much in IW and Miami though.
Good luck Milos.
 
#5 ·
Raonic a natural mover :confused:. To be a top player like Murray, Nadal and Djokovic your movements has to be better than Raonic's movement. One of the reasons his baseline game is not up there is because his movement is decent but not great. On today's ridiculously slow courts you need to be able to defend and and attack in good measure.
 
#7 ·
I see Raonic as the new Isner/Querrey, personally.

There are similarities in game style and issues with movement/stamina, but perhaps more because I think his general level is likely to be in the bottom end of the top 20. He has proved that he can challenge for titles at 250 and 500 level, and also have respectable runs in Slam(s), but the real key to his progress is whether he can go deeper in the Masters events.

Arguably, those events are the toughest for players of his current ranking...typically they are likely to exit around the R2-R3 stage, with a lack of seeding being a big handicap.


The rankings comparison (in post #1) is interesting, and shows how quickly he has broken through compared to other players (particularly Granollers and Troicki). However, I would argue that Tsonga and Isner are best left out - Tsonga had chronic back problems in the early years of his career, and Isner didn't focus on the pro circuit until he left university, aged 23-24.
 
#9 ·
I don't follow him closely but saw from AO his ROS and backhand are not that good. I don't know how bad they used to be, but if he's improved them then they must've been really terrible before :unsure:.

He has a nice even temperament and seems like a nice guy. I hope he keeps improving :yeah:.
 
#10 ·
Big Johns just got out of college ranking is always intriguing to look at.
 
#13 ·
quit looking at those silly stats and watch his matches instead. raonic's game has improved significantly even despite the hip surgery. his dtl bh, inside-in fh, movement, and stamina are far superior to where he was a year ago today. sure, his strategy and tactics in the hewitt match were lousy at best and he got tight in his first big gs encounter in prime-time, but it was a great learning experience and i expect big things from milos in the next two years :cool:
 
#16 ·
His improvement was delayed by the injury at Wimbledon. Still to have a big serve and win two titles is a good start.
Some players take forever to win that one title.

I agree his movement and backhand need to improve. By improving those, he can place his forehand more often than having to blast it every time and make errors.
 
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