Milos Raonic explains what Novak Djokovic has done which has completely changed tennis

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Milos Raonic believes that Novak Djokovic has done something which has changed tennis forever.

Djokovic is a 24-time Grand Slam champion, with the former world number one winning more major singles titles than anybody else in the Open Era.

Despite holding this record, Djokovic is still competing at 38 years old and is bidding for a 25th Grand Slam title at the Australian Open this year.

Someone who knows what it is like to play Djokovic on the biggest stage is Raonic, who officially retired from tennis last week, who has now explained how the Serbian has changed the sport.

Milos Raonic says Novak Djokovic has changed tennis alongside another Grand Slam champion

Prior to announcing his retirement from tennis, Raonic spoke on The Changeover Podcast about the current state of tennis.

In this conversation, Raonic went into great detail about the two ways he thinks tennis has changed over the years, which he thinks is majorly down to both Djokovic and eight-time Grand Slam champion Ivan Lendl.

Raonic believes that Lendl brought fitness into the mainstream of tennis, while Djokovic made players think more about how tennis players look after themselves away from the court.

“I think nowadays the baseline of being fit is much higher, because I always talk about it kind of having two major changes that I would know of, because I don’t know who did it originally for tennis,” said Raonic. “But, I would say these are changes that affect the sport in general, because I think some people might not be happy because you’re going to look over people’s natural favorites that they’re so emotionally connected to.

“But first of all Lendl, I think first of all for these changes to happen the player has to be very good, because he has to set the standard and people need to believe, ‘Oh, I need to do that now to be any good’. So, I think Lendl when you talk about that conversation wise, Lendl was the first guy to be doing the fitness side of it like crazy right?

“People were like look how he is taking that aspect professionally and then I think Novak, it’s kind of ridiculous people how much people talk about him not eating gluten in like 2011! But, he was the one who was like this whole thing off the court and out of the gym, that dimension is critically important as well.

“So, I think those were like the shifts for the professional level of the game, so this guy makes it to the top, he’s doing this one thing differently. Because if you’re 40 in the world and you’re doing those things it probably isn’t catching on, people don’t feel the urgency that they need to introduce that to be competitive.

“But if you’re number one in the world and you’re winning a bunch then, like Lendl was in eight Grand Slam finals in a row at the US Open, he had that thing where he lost a bunch of finals…But something like that, people are going to take notice like what is this person doing differently.

“Like I always tell people when I think about it, the most important lessons that I picked up, especially the first years on tour, you go to these like Slams, like once you’re there every week, because when you’re there every once in a while you get so caught up in the event. But once you’re there every week, for me it was like 2011 specifically, I remember you’re sitting in the locker room and you’re paying attention to what are the best guys doing? Who’s on their team? What do they do before a match? Let’s say they’re practicing at 2 O’clock, how early do they get out of the locker room to go to the gym before? What are the things they do in the gym?

“You’re just like almost plagiarising into yourself, like what can I steal from the habits that they do to make it my own. Then you eventually get to a point when you are trying all of those things and then you’re like what works for me, you see Roger [Federer], you see Novak, they travel with a fitness trainer, they travel with a physiotherapist, they travel with a coach, who do I need to have on my team? Maybe you don’t need everybody, but you’re going to at least try everybody if you can afford it, and if you have that support system and you’re doing well enough.

“And then you’re going to be like, maybe I don’t need them all the time, like Roger didn’t travel much with his fitness trainer, Novak had his whole team there all the time, Rafa [Nadal] never really had a fitness trainer around on tour that I saw. And you’re kind of just nit-picking these things from the best, so they need to be doing something different and they have to be one of the best for it to really take notice across the board.

“So, I think those are the kind of things that make those momentous changes and that becomes a standard for everybody. Now everybody talks about what they eat, what do they eat before, what do they eat after? The amount of people that are eating just plain rice in the locker room and I mean it will probably change significantly, like every generation probably had that one thing where it’s like hey we need to incorporate this thing.

“But, I would say Lendl brought the gym into the equation, Novak brought the lifestyle into the equation, like the other hours of the day where you don’t feel like you’re doing the true work. You’re exhausting yourself in the gym, you’re exhausting yourself on court, Novak brought in that passive time like how do you manage that time into the equation.”

Did Milos Raonic ever beat Novak Djokovic?

Raonic enjoyed a very successful career of his own, which includes winning eight ATP titles, as well as reaching the Wimbledon final and a career-high ranking of world number three.

Despite once being one of the best players in the world, Raonic was never able to win a single match against Djokovic.

Raonic played against Djokovic on 12 previous occasions, but was beaten every single time by the Serbian.

As well as losing all 12 of these meetings, Raonic was also only able to win three of the 33 sets he has played against Djokovic.

This includes the final of three Masters 1000 tournaments, including the championship match at Indian Wells in 2016 where he won just two games.