As recently as August it would have been a gamble to predict Canadian tennis player Milos Raonic reaching the World Tour Finals in London. The talented 23 year-old, who immigrated from Montenegro aged 3, exploded onto the ATP tour back in 2011 when he became the first Canadian since Greg Rusedski to win an ATP event at the SAP open. However, in the years that followed Raonic suffered from distinctively erratic results. It was only earlier in the 2014 season that Raonic was still struggling to consistently preform. Impaired by an ankle injury, he fell in the 3rd round of the Australian Open to Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov before withdrawing from competitive play for a month for rehabilitation.
However, upon his return Raonic soon racked up consecutive Masters quarter-final appearances, in Miami and Monte-Carlo respectively, and went on to reach his first Grand Slam quarter-final at the French Open in May. Going into Wimbledon expectations were high, commentators having long thought that Raonic’s powerful game, built around his massive serve, would be ideally suited to the grass surface that the championship is played on. However, Raonic’s limited movement and poor volleying in prior years meant that he had failed to progress further then the 2nd round in three previous appearances. Despite Raonic’s previous under-performances, commentators were still optimistic given the improvements to his game since the hiring of new coach, and former top ten player, Ivan Ljubičić. Raonic, aided by improved movement and a more tactical game plan, achieved a career highlight in reaching the Wimbledon semi-final, losing to seven-time champion Roger Federer.
Sadly Raonic could not maintain the momentum gained during the grass court season, losing to Japan’s Kei Nishikori in the 4th round of the US Open. Going into the Asian swing of the ATP tour it was still questionable if Raonic would qualify for the World Tour Finals, a round-robin event held in London and contested by the top 8 players in the world. Whilst Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Australian Open champion Stanislas Wawrinka had already secured the top 4 positions, the remaining places were still being tightly contested. Amongst those competing for a place were veterans David Ferrer and Tomas Berdych, former prodigies Grigor Dimitrov and Kei Nishikori with a resurgent Andy Murray and Raonic himself rounding off the contenders.
Raonic started poorly, retiring due to injury in the 2nd round of the Shanghai Masters to Argentinean wildcard Juan Mónaco. However, despite these setbacks Raonic entered the final regular ATP tournament of the year, the Paris Masters, with a shot of qualifying but only if he reached the final. Aided by the announcement of Rafael Nadal’s withdrawal from the World Tour Finals, Raonic blasted his way through the draw and avenged his loss to Wimbledon conqueror Roger Federer in the semi-finals. Although Raonic was unable to overpower world number one Novak Djokovic in the championship match, he gained one of the last remaining qualifying spots and secured the first, of most likely many, World Tour Final appearances.
