Thornhill's Raonic piling up aces and upsets in Melbourne
Milos Raonic of Canada celebrates his win over Michael Llodra of France at the Australian Open tennis championships in Melbourne, Australia, Jan. 20, 2011.
John Donegan/AP That would be the family of Milos Raonic, reacting to the 20-year-old’s momentous run through the first three rounds of the Australian Open that will likely help him crack the top 100 when the rankings update Jan. 31.
“It’s been nerve wracking and it’s been fun,” Raonic’s mother, Vesna, said Saturday after a whirlwind week in which her son exploded onto the tennis world, upsetting a pair of highly ranked players on the way to a fourth round match with No. 7 David Ferrer, and a potential quarterfinals meeting with Rafael Nadal. “He’s playing well, he’s playing with confidence. He’s making it easy for us to watch him.”
Well, not always easy.
Raonic is playing in his second major – he lost in the first round of the last U.S. Open. His blistering serve – one ace was clocked at 230 km/h, the fastest serve on record at the Open so far – stormed past No. 10 Mikhail Youzhny and No. 22 Michael Llodra this week.
He’s stacking up aces and upsets, much to the delight of his family watching half a world away, and is now the only Canadian since Daniel Nestor in 1999 to have advanced to a round of 16 at a major tournament. John McEnroe referred to Raonic on Twitter Friday as “the real deal.”
Back at the family’s home, there’s a gathering of kin – mother, father Dusan, brother Momir, sister Jelna, and eight month old twins David and Ema, who appear to be oblivious to all the excitement.
“They (twins) are watching with us, it’s amazing that at eight months, they are quiet … at seven, eight o’clock at night, just at bed time, they are very calm,” Vesna Raonic said.
“I try to be cool but it’s very hard to control. I’m glad he cannot see me, but I try. We try to sit still but all the break points, the long points, it’s hard. Then when the match is over, oh yes, the whole family jumps up and down, but we stay quiet too.”
While Raonics are a nervous and jumpy bunch, they have noticed Milos’ ability to tame his own nerves through the pressure packed moments at the Open.
“Even when he was playing junior tennis, he was more nerves, he is a temper boy, but now he’s keeping everything under control,” Vesna said.
“That was one of the challenges he needed to face. You can see he is calm and focused, you can see how he manages it.”
That calm developed, along with that huge serve, when Raonic began playing tennis at the age of nine. The sport was a first love, and the parents, both engineers who brought the family to Canada from Montenegro when Milos was three, never had to push their son.
“From the beginning, everyone said he had a good serve, even when he was 12, his first coach said he had a serve like Pete Sampras,” Vesna said.
“Now the experts say it’s his biggest weapon. But ever since six or seven, he loved the game, and when he started playing it, he was always dedicated. Can you imagine an 11 year old boy, he goes to school but every day he’s up at 5:30 in the morning to go to practice, and then someone picks him up after school and he practices all night, and he never complained, not once.
“And no one pushed him. We never thought at his young age that it would be a profession for him. He finished high school (Thornhill Secondary School) at age 16, he was a very good student, and in our family, we stress education. Some universities came looking at him, but he decided (at 16) he wanted to play tennis. He just played it all the time, non stop, even through injuries.”
At 16, Raonic’s biggest claim to fame might have been his uncle, Branimir Gvozdenovic, who was at the time the vice president of Montenegro.
Now, the audience for Open on the Balkan Island is growing by the day as Raonic continues to tumble seeded players.
“I am following closely the Australian Open,” Gvozdenovic told The Associated Press Saturday. “It is great when such a young man achieves such great results. Naturally I am very proud of him. He has always been a great boy and an excellent student.”
After a family discussion, Raonic had the blessing to move to Montreal at 16 to train at the national tennis centre. He enlisted a new coach – Galo Blanco – this summer and trained in Barcelona, where his mother says her son took his game to a new level.
“Spain is a tremendous country for tennis, and Milo worked hard on his fitness,” Vesna said. “Everyone is saying now how amazing it is that this is coming together for him. We are very proud of what he has done.”
The family will tune into the fourth round match, scheduled for Monday Melbourne time. It will be Raonic’s toughest yet. But if the magic were to somehow continue, decisions would have to be made on where they will watch the coming matches.
“We’re not sure,” Vesna said when asked if the family would head to Australia if their son advanced to the finals. “Maybe … everyone might just get a ticket and go watch him play.”
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