Milos Raonic went down in straight sets at the French Open on Sunday to the Spanish outsider Albert Ramos-Viñolas in the sort of cool, overcast and heavy conditions that attacking players have learned to rue on the red clay of Roland Garros.
Bring on the grass-court season, and the big-hitting Raonic, already a contender, will be much more of a conversation piece than usual.
Raonic, a Canadian, has hired John McEnroe as a coaching consultant, which means headlines and camera flashes galore before Raonic, ranked No. 9 in the world, so much as smacks one huge serve in anger at the All England Club in late June.
“It doesn’t seem like he’s been able to do as well as certainly someone with his game could do, and I think he could win it,” McEnroe said of Raonic’s chances at Wimbledon, where he reached the semifinals in 2014 but has never been past the third round otherwise. “Hopefully I can add that little bit and give him a little bit better understanding of how to take advantage of his attributes, his size. He’s a big strong, great, dedicated and smart kid.”
And yet for a deeply rational young man like Raonic, who likes to be the boss, hiring McEnroe is a surprising move, all the more so because he had two coaches in Riccardo Piatti, an Italian considered one of the game’s better technicians, and Carlos Moyá, a Spaniard who, like McEnroe, was once No. 1.
Could too many top chefs spoil the bouillabaisse?
“At the end of the day, every coach I have is to some extent an adviser,” Raonic said after his 6-2, 6-4, 6-4 defeat in the fourth round. “And it’s my job personally, out of everything I hear, to weigh what it’s worth and weigh what is best for me. I’m the CEO of Milos Raonic Tennis. That’s it.”
A former superstar who decides to coach is now on a well-blazed trail in tennis. It began with Jimmy Connors coaching Andy Roddick in the 2000s and flourished with Ivan Lendl helping Andy Murray end Britain’s Wimbledon singles drought in 2013.
Others have piled in, including Amélie Mauresmo, Martina Navratilova (very briefly), Michael Chang, Goran Ivanisevic and McEnroe’s former rivals Stefan Edberg and Boris Becker, with Becker helping Novak Djokovic strengthen his grip on the men’s game.
But none of these tennis luminaries has had quite the media footprint at the time of their appointment as McEnroe. He is the most prominent English-language voice in the sport as a commentator and is still, at 57, a bigger magnet than most of today’s contenders, including Raonic. He announced his own hiring during his daily show on Eurosport at Roland Garros, delivering the news as a lyric while strumming a guitar.
“I thought that was a different way to announce it, because I don’t do social media; don’t tweet, do Facebook, any of it,” he said when we spoke Sunday. “I actually prefer talking to people.”
But can McEnroe really sublimate his ego and put himself at the service of a 25-year-old player?
“I think so; I mean I hope so,” McEnroe said. “That’s what we are going to find out. I’m hoping this is not a one-shot thing. I think it would be incredibly difficult to make an impact that quickly. I think it’s a process.”
McEnroe remains a bundle of nervous energy: shifting in his chair and folding and unfolding his arms repeatedly in the sparsely decorated NBC office at the French Open. He does have recent coaching experience as the eponymous director of his academy on Randalls Island in New York and offering occasional counsel to young American prospects like Noah Rubin.
His coaching résumé on tour is not nearly so up-to-date. There was an informal arrangement with Becker in 1993 shortly after McEnroe retired. McEnroe was also the U.S. Davis Cup captain for one season in 2000.
“Boris asked me to work with him between Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in 1993, and it’s a long story and pretty humorous, but basically, he didn’t listen to a word I said,” McEnroe said.
“I was going through a divorce; he was going through this fight with Tiriac,” McEnroe said, referring to Becker’s former agent Ion Tiriac. “So the tennis part suddenly seemed to become secondary. But the idea was good.”
For most of the last 20 years, the timing seemed wrong to McEnroe (or his personality seemed too strong for contemporary stars to bring him on board), but he sounded genuinely eager now for at least a part-time role.
“Only one of my six kids is still at the house, and I’m not getting any younger,” he said. “I think the former players coming in has been great for the sport and especially for some of the players like Boris. I think it was a great move, and it turned out to be a win-win.”
McEnroe also praised Moya’s work with Raonic.
“The best I’ve ever seen Milos play was this year at the Australian,” he said of Raonic’s attack-minded run to the Australian Open semifinals in January. “I really felt he was playing the style of play in order to get into these top guys’ heads and potentially take it to that next level.”
McEnroe and Raonic have mutual friends in the family of Jann Wenner, the founder of Rolling Stone, and have gotten to know each other away from the courts.
“I was sort of just looking for another set of eyes to be a bit more efficient on grass,” said Raonic, who emphasized that it was also about “generally improving.”
McEnroe was one of the game’s great volleyers and won three Wimbledon singles titles. Moya never got past the fourth round, and Ivan Ljubicic, who had previously helped coach Raonic, never got past the third.
Perhaps that consulting fee will be money well-spent, after all, even if the odds of a long-term gig have to be viewed as long with all the alpha males involved.
“They just need clarity of roles and responsibilities, and John can be a tremendous added value; the message just has to be unified to Milos,” said Paul Annacone, the former coach of Pete Sampras and Roger Federer. “John can help Milos get more comfortable coming forward and finishing at net.”
McEnroe got a head start in Paris: attending practice Saturday and sitting next to Moya in the players box on the Suzanne Lenglen Court on Sunday for the first two sets as Raonic was gradually enmeshed in the unseeded Ramos-Viñolas’ web.
“Believe me, I know what it’s like to get sucked into playing the type of game you don’t want to play and proving something you don’t need to prove, so I really felt for him,” McEnroe said.
The results did not improve after McEnroe left to fulfill his television duties. There will be more such multitasking during Wimbledon along with plenty of camera flashes. But first comes the practice court and the grass court tournament at Queen’s Club. Let the cross-border consulting project begin.
“If not an American, a Canadian, a North American brother,” McEnroe, arms folded, said with a slightly nervous chuckle.
