Milos Raonic – Canada Fan Blog an (unofficial) blog about tennis and Canadian player Milos Raonic

What does Raonic need to improve to become a slam contender?

At times it’s easy to forget that Milos Raonic has only been competing on the main tour for two years. Raonic has made rapid progress since his stunning breakthrough at the 2011 Australian Open when he made the fourth round as a qualifier and we’re now accustomed to his name being bandied around as one of the most dangerous players outside of the top ten. It’s been a meteoric rise for the 22 year old who already has four ATP titles to his name and has established himself as a mainstay in the world’s top 20.

Raonic has all the tools to be a significant threat at the majors but there’s still some way for him to go before he starts troubling the likes of Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray over best of five sets.  However the promising thing for the youngster is that he’s already beaten Murray on the tour (on the clay of Barcelona in 2012) and come close to upsetting Roger Federer on multiple occasions even though there’s still plenty of room for improvement in his game.

He’s been making steady progress in the slams and he has been encouraged by his past two showings – reaching the fourth round at the US Open and the Australian Open, losing in straight sets to Murray and Federer. However before he can test the ‘Big Four’ on the biggest stage, he needs to improve his returning, often the Achilles heel of his game. The top four are all brilliant returners and experts at taming big servers and they know that if they can draw Raonic into longer rallies they can expose his sometimes lumbering movement and inconsistent backhand. And on their own serves, they don’t feel under so much pressure as they know they’ll get plenty of cheap points off the Raonic return.

Raonic admits as much himself but he feels he’s improving. “I think I'm getting quite better,” he told the media earlier this year, “I'm getting better in movement, more experience, how to deal with situations, my backhand, many things. My return game is getting better. All these kind of things I've worked on and I have a lot more belief and confidence in.”

“It's just really about incorporating them better into matches. Just sort of matching that (training) intensity in matches would definitely make a big difference.  I think I'm getting closer (to the top four).  I can't really put a time limit on it. The sooner the better. I just have to keep working away.  When that opportunity comes up, I have to try to make the most of it.”

“The goal every day is to keep getting better, improve something every day. It's about sort of working away and hoping that time comes sooner than later, trying to make the most of it when it does. If you focus on those things too much, I think a lot of those things are out of my control. I try to focus on the things that I can control, that I have (a) say in. I can't really control if they're (the top four) getting better or how they are playing.”

Written by Raymond Doyle from Live-Tennis.com.