Raonic impresses, but says no one plays well on grass

LONDON (Reuters) - A few of the past Wimbledon champions watching this year's championships would disagree but big-serving Canadian Milos Raonic reckons grass courts do not allow for great tennis.





The 23-year-old boasts a game that looks tailor-made for the silky All England Club lawns, a monstrous first serve and clubbing groundstrokes but even after reaching the third round for the first time he was less than glowing about the surface.

"I don't think really for anybody that's it's a surface that anybody can say they play their best tennis on grass," Raonic, who beat American Jack Sock 6-3 6-4 6-4, told reporters.

"I think it's a matter of playing less worse than you do on other surfaces."

Seasoned Wimbledon watchers would disagree, pointing rightly to the sublime entertainment served up by the likes of three-times champions John McEnroe, now commentating for the BBC, Boris Becker, coach to men's top seed Novak Djokovic and this year's fourth seed Roger Federer, gunning for an eighth title.

Whether he has learned to love playing on grass or not, Raonic is beginning to look the part on it.

"It does take quite a bit of adjustment. For me it's difficult," he said. "I got long legs, so my centre of gravity is pretty high.

"So for that movement aspect it takes a lot of adjusting, especially after clay. I've just sort of focused more on the ways I start the points, and then everything else has come together."

Wimbledon aside, Raonic has reached at least the last 16 at the three other grand slams, chalking up his best result at a major earlier this month when he reached the French Open quarter-finals.

After winning six out of six sets so far here this year and with a match against unseeded Lukasz Kubot to come he is now eyeing the second week of Wimbledon.

Capitalising on early breaks in both the first two sets, the tall world No.9 dominated the shorter Sock, serving 13 aces and hitting 40 winners.

In years gone by a match between a Canadian and an American would have had only on outcome, but the tables are turning and Raonic is leading a new generation which includes, on the men's side Vasek Pospisil and on the women's Eugenie Bouchard who is being tipped as the next Maria Sharapova.

Montenegro-born, Toronto-raised and now resident in Monaco, Raonic, with his speedy precision serve and big forehand, has even helped Canada leapfrog the U.S. in the Davis Cup rankings.

His breakthrough into the top echelons of tennis has helped nurture the sport there, creating what he sees as the belief system necessary for success.

"Those days you're tired and you don't want to wake up you got to go train, you got to go run, you got to do weights, you got to play on court for a few hours, they seem a lot easier when you have a belief in the system because you see that somebody is already succeeding through that system," he said.

Bouchard, 20, a semi-finalist at the French and Australian Opens this year, reached the third round with victory over Spain's Silvia Soler Espinosa.





(Additional reporting by Martyn Herman, editing by Pritha Sarkar)


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