Placed in the context of the impact that the likes of Ivan Lendl and Boris Becker have had in recent years, working with men whose gifts and demeanours they could complement rather than mirror, the recruitment of John McEnroe by Milos Raonic for this grass court season makes all the more sense as the Canadian explains the nature of their work together.
There is no way this mild-mannered lumberjack of a man will ever play like the ultimate shot-maker who repeatedly lit up Centre Court in the seventies and eighties with his delicacy of touch, not to mention the odd word or two out of place.
However what a man who has now been hovering around the upper edges of the men’s game for the last couple of years but has yet to reach a Grand Slam final could do was toughen up when it came to the crucial matches and that, it seems, is the message Supermac has pounded home time after time, that he must impose himself more.
Their work includes more of an emphasis on attacking play and the 25-year-old is pleased with the direction of travel in that regard, not least the way in which he served and volleyed during his quarter-final win over Novak Djokovic’s conqueror Sam Querrey, having had a narrow escape of his own against David Goffin in the fourth round.
“That was a part of the motivation to bring him along to help, was to improve that aspect of how much I can implement it in my game and how to use it and what the right moments are,” said Raonic.
He has, however, remained self-critical about retreating into relative passivity at times in the course of this tournament and that is the major part of their work together since they first sat down to discuss required to be done immediately after McEnroe had commentated on last month’s French Open final.
“Obviously being more effective coming forward was a big thing on my side. A big thing on his side was demeanour on the court, presence on the court. Both those things have been given quite a bit of attention to,” said Raonic.
There has clearly been an element of benefiting from better understanding how others see him, friend and foe alike.
“He definitely keeps emphasizing demeanour on court, which I probably would not have put in as one of the priorities for what I needed to improve at that moment,” Raonic admitted.
However he appears to have shown enough in terms of ambition to demonstrate to McEnroe that this collaboration is worth his while, a message reinforced when he was asked about his satisfaction at having reached his second Grand Slam semi-final of the season.
“It's not enough,” he said.
“I came here with a simple goal for this tournament. I think everybody on my team has that same objective. I think that's why John was willing to join, for that same goal. This is a process and hopefully I can keep it going.”
A psychologist might raise some concerns about the wordiness of that description of his target of winning this tournament and he now faces a true test of his development when he faces the man who gave him a rudimentary lesson in grass court competitiveness at the same stage of this tournament two years ago.
He has met Roger Federer 11 times in all, winning only twice, but can draw some confidence from the second of those having been the most recent of their encounters, when he took his turn to win in straight sets in the final at Brisbane back in January.
“I have very clear objectives for myself, goals that are beyond this tournament. To achieve those things, you have to face off against the best players at the best tournaments,” he observed.
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