Raonic: “I can’t have a normal life anymore”

He appears on the tour intermittently only to land a slew of aces and move his large frame (1.96m), rusted over the years. Absent from the circuit between July 2021 and 2023, Milos Raonic is unlikely to return to the level that helped him become the first Canadian to reach a Grand Slam final (Wimbledon, 2016).

And he seems to have gotten used to the idea. In the columns of Tennis Magazine, the 33-year-old reflects on how difficult it was to be away from the courts for two years, nursing foot and Achilles tendon injuries.

“Not only was I not able to hit a single ball for almost a year, I couldn’t even do cardio. As a result, I gained weight. I was much more sedentary than I had ever been in my life. When I started making adjustments, I lost a lot of weight very quickly, 18 kg in four or five weeks.

“I only drank water and only ate one steak a day, which I cooked myself! At the beginning, it was really difficult, but you get used to it,” explained Raonic, who played his last official match at the Olympic Games, where German Dominik Koepfer beat him in the first round.

However, the 33-year-old is confident that he can beat any player and it’s hard to argue with him on that as he eliminated Frances Tiafoe, then world No 10, At the Canadian Open in 2023.

“It was never a question of level. The only two questions that matter are: 1- Can I push the physical cursor to prepare myself as I have to? 2 – Can I maintain this physical effort match after match, week after week?”

“I accepted the fact that I was going to rebuild my life”

Convinced that his career is coming to an end, Raonic remembers his mental and physical battles during the rehabilitation. The former world No 3 noted he sometimes had trouble walking.

“The progress was so slow that sometimes I could do it, and then the next day I couldn’t even get out of bed. It’s not like I’m no longer able to have an athlete’s life, I just can’t have a normal life, with just daily activities. This is probably the hardest thing to live with. Mentally, it exhausts you,” recalled the man who holds the record for most aces (47) in a two-set match at Queen’s since the ATP began keeping track of the statistics in 1991.

“There were a lot of moments when I was at home, on my couch, watching on TV all those tournaments that I had loved to play for so many years. But most of the time, I didn’t really enjoy it because I wanted to be there, I wanted to have the chance to play, to participate.”

The Canadian has been thoughtful about the second life that awaits him on the other side of the retirement:

“Besides that, during these two years, I was able to discover a lot of new things, and appreciate them. And I realised one nice thing: there is life after tennis. It’s something that, somehow, scares you. I accepted the fact that I was going to rebuild my life and depend on something other than tennis.”

Raonic is, however, not done with his tennis career yet and plans to continue, at least until the Masters 1000 in Toronto in 2025, given his body allows him. “That has always been the idea, but it’s very far away,” he contemplated.

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