!Rao2 by Pete Bodo
It wasn't right up there with, say, losing the Olympic men's hockey gold medal to Sweden in the Lillehammer games in 1994, but on the whole yesterday was a pretty lousy day for Canadian sports—as the Toronto Star's Damien Cox painfully elaborated, tracking the fortunes of a quartet of Canadians at Wimbledon.
But the good news is that young Milos Raonic, who went down with a hip injury early in his match with Gilles Muller and subsequently had to quit, is not as badly hurt as it first appeared and hopes to represent Canada in next month's Davis Cup tie against Equador.
It was a shame to see the promising boy from Thornhill, Ont., out of the tournament, although I'm not sure Rafael Nadal is all that broken up about it. They were penciled in to play the next round, had Raonic gotten by Muller. Every generation seems to have two or three players who may not have the right stuff to be No. 1, or to dominate through most of the year, but who are legitimate threats to win Wimbledon. And we all know that if you win Wimbledon, you don't owe anyone any explanations down in Melbourne, Paris or New York.
But curiously, nobody seems more susceptible to hope-crushing injury or illness than some of these potential Wimbledon champions in waiting. Remember what happened to Mark Philippoussis in the Wimbledon quarterfinals in 1999? He won the first set from Pete Sampras but then tore cartilage in his knee and had to retire. Sampras's typically precise analysis: "I dodged a bullet out there."
Philippoussis, perhaps the most talented player never to win a major, would make one more big statement at Wimbledon, reaching the final in 2003. Unfortunately, the man waiting for him was some Swiss upstart named Roger Federer. He would beat Philippoussis in straight sets to bag his first title in SW19.
Then there was John Isner, who's still in the tournament this year. Isner is one of the biggest names at Wimbledon these days (assist to Nicolas Mahut), yet despite that huge, grass-burning serve, Isner has won exactly two matches at the All England Club, both of them over Mahut. That's partly because Isner missed Wimbledon with a case of mononucleosis in 2009. Although he's already 26, Isner hasn't had that many chances to play Wimbledon. Now that he's gotten over the Mahut hump with considerably more ease than last year, he could do well.
But the injury that popped right into my mind when Raonic went down was the one incurred by Boris Becker in 1985, the year he would go on to shock the field and become the youngest-ever Wimbledon men's singles champ at age 17. Let's review that episode just for the fun of it.
In 1984, Becker had to retire when he tore ligaments in his left ankle while playing American Bill Scanlon in a third-round match on an outside court (I think it was the on the old No. 3, but can't find verification). What happened the following year was more intriguing, and has become part of the lore and legend of the game.
In the fourth-round in 1985, Becker was back on the same court, playing another American, Tim Mayotte. Becker trailed by two sets to one when—incredibly—he turned an ankle again. It looked as if Becker was finished—he reportedly told the umpire he couldn't go on. But by then Becker's manager Ion Tiriac and coach Gunther Bosch, both of whom had been sitting courtside, were out on the court—urging Becker not to give up, to seek medical help. The umpire allowed it, and Becker had his ankle heavily taped.
I'm not sure how much time elapsed, but Becker ultimately was able to continue. Mayotte's brother and sometime coach, John, who was present, put it this way to the New York Times: “Tiriac didn’t give a damn; he just walked out onto the court. Tim objected, but it was a nice-guy-from-New-England objection, and Boris got the ankle taped and found a way to win.”
The rest, as they say, is history.
Given the kind of hype Raonic has been generating, and the fact that just days earlier the draw had coughed up that unlikely Isner vs. Mahut rematch, it would have been fitting in a surreal way if Raonic goes on to win Wimbledon next year—preferably after having to call an injury time-out? The parallels are worth contemplating, even if Raonic at 20 is already three years older than Becker was in July of 1985.
Raonic is no more your typical big-lug-with-an-atomic serve than was Becker. He was seeded No. 31 (but ranked No. 25) at the start of Wimbledon this year; Becker was ranked No. 20 in '85, but unseeded (back then, they seeded only 16). Neither Raonic nor Becker were highly touted junior prodigies (in Becker's case, partly because he was still a junior when he won Wimbledon; he simply didn't have enough time to establish a junior reputation). Becker and Raonic are among that select group of players (led by John McEnroe) who more or less popped up out of nowhere, like those poor academic performers in high school who needed only the stimulation and demands of college courses to really hit their stride.
One thing we know about Raonic, having seen him grind and struggle through a clay-court season that probably was more successful than his results indicate, is that he's determined and unafraid of hard work. That was true of Becker as well. And while Raonic doesn't appear to have the out-sized character of Becker, he has a similarly imposing presence. He's large (at 6'5", he's even two inches taller than Becker) if less outspoken, in a way that has nothing to do with his height or weight.
The tangibles are fairly obvious. At Wimbledon, the conversation about any player ought to begin and end with the serve, and in some cases the degree of time and thought devoted to the stroke far outweighs all others. I feel like I hit on something yesterday when I suggested that a player's mantra at Wimbledon ought to consist of eight words: Make the point as short as you can. And while that isn't the only route to success (look under "B" for Borg), it certainly worked for Becker, Sampras, Goran Ivanisevic, Stefan Edberg, and even Federer. That's not bad company. Raonic seems disposed to embrace that approach. He's a free-swinger and a point-ender, and that bodes well for him at Wimbledon.
Raonic isn't the first well-designed Wimbledon competitor who's dreams of grass-court success have been deferred, and Becker has shown that big dreams in big men die hard.