MONTREAL – When it ended, Milos Raonic arched his back and screamed to the Heavens.
When it finished, Vasek Pospisil was spent, his eyes glazed over in pain and disbelief.
When it was all over, Centre Court roared and shook like it was a Habs playoff game.
When the duel was put to bed, the winner was Canadian tennis that has now, somewhat suddenly, become a power on the world stage.
Saturday afternoon was the moment that had been brewing for years – since 2006, when a new mandate and vision was created by Tennis Canada. That moment came at the facility where it all began, hope becoming reality on this picture perfect Saturday afternoon at Stade Uniprix in Montreal.
The kids became men in an epic, historic, memorable battle that went the distance, and then the limit in a third-set tiebreak in which Raonic prevailed, 7-4.
It was, in a way, a graduation. For 22-year-old Milos Raonic to go from just a hope to the next one, to the first Canadian man to ever be a world top 10.
“To achieve what I did today, after so many doubts…from so many people, is really special,” an emotional Raonic told Sportsnet, just minutes after the match, his voice still cracking.
Moments before, Pospisil, only 23, had walked off centre court, still signed a few autographs as he trudged past a couple thousand Canadians screaming his name. He ducked his head from the sun, into the darkness of the hallway outside the players’ locker room, and stopped. His eyes were beet-red. He was in tears.
It had almost happened Saturday for the son of a tennis coach, whose family had years ago made the five-hour move from Vernon B.C. to Vancouver, when Pospisil was a child – because his parents knew the only way his game could progress was by living in the big city.
It had almost happened Saturday, just seven months after mononucleosis knocked him out for the end of the 2012 season and the beginning of this.
The fairytale had almost happened. For a guy who had never won more than a match at an event of this magnitude to be two points away from the finals to meet Rafael Nadal. For a guy who began working with a new coach, Frederic Fontang, while his body still wasn’t right after the illness. For a guy who was ranked 141 earlier this year, and now, after a six-week run in Bogota, Vancouver and Montreal, has shot up 100 spots.
“My goal at the start of the year was that if everything went perfect, I’d be top 50,” Pospisil said. “Now I’m top 40.”
Now he’s top 40, and climbing. Now, Raonic is top 10.
“It’s a goal I set out this year, and to be able to do it here in Montreal is pretty amazing,” said Raonic.
While the narrative with the greatest Canadian singles player ever has always been potential, it’s also been littered with questions around each corner.
Would he ever take that next step? Will it ever come together? Is he a legitimate threat on tour?
Until this week in Canada, Raonic never surpassed a quarter-final at a 1000-series tournament. He’d made the round of 16 twice in slams, but in the big events, not much else.
“Today is just the beginning,” Raonic said.
“This is just the beginning,” Pospisil chimed in.
The start of what, exactly?
Five days ago, Pospisil’s post-Rogers Cup plans had been to fly to Cincinnati to qualify for the main draw of the next tour stop. Now, he has an automatic entry in Ohio and likely will get into most of the big tournaments the rest of the year because of his new ranking.
With few points to defend in the ATP’s rollover ranking system until the end of 2013, there is a good chance barring injury, that Pospisil will soar higher than top 40 on tour by season’s end.
There is a legitimate possibility that Pospisil will now suddenly be seeded in many of the upcoming major tour events, perhaps even the U.S. Open, moving forward.
At a time when no American is in the top 20 for the first time since rankings were instituted in 1973, can Raonic-Pospisil become a rivalry in the game?
“It definitely can,” said Raonic. “There’s going to be many more times where it happens, but today it happened on the biggest stage for us so far.”
“For my sake, I hope we see each other a lot more,” said Pospisil. “I don’t see why not.”
“For it to really be a big-time rivalry, it has to be on big stages, like you see with Rafa and Novak (Djokovic), Rafa and (Roger) Federer,” added Raonic. “It’s always on the finals or the semis of the big events. So I think we both have a long ways to go to sort of have that consistently at the bigger moments of big tournaments.”
A long way to go, but the early stages look bright. For Raonic, for Pospisil, for 19-year-old Filip Peliwo, who as the youngest man in the main draw of the tournament, advanced to the second round. A long way to go, but the early stages look bright for the future.
It began seven years ago, with that vision and it came from Louis Borfiga.
He was plucked from the French tennis federation to construct a development program for Canadian tennis, with the intention to make the moments and achievements of this week a consistent reality.
Tennis Canada had aspirations of reaching these grand stages, to be sure. And the governing body went about a methodical plan: Invest into growth at the grassroots level and devise a national program that would make the players this country produced as successful as the French and the Spaniards and the Serbians.
Thing is, their blue print had that graduation ceremony penciled in for 2017. And next month, incredibly, the Canadians fly to Belgrade to meet Djokovic and those Serbians in a Davis Cup World Group semifinal – the Spaniards and French long eliminated.
So when Saturday’s fight ended, sure Pospisil left in tears. But he called this Rogers Cup run a “great week,” and said he’d wake up Sunday morning and “feel better about things.”
And when the semi wrapped, yes, Raonic fought back tears, but by an hour later he had re-grouped.
“I’m excited, but I’m not spent, because I’m looking forward to the opportunity (in the finals) tomorrow,” he said, before a press conference room that was at capacity. “This week is not over, by any means.”
It’s just getting started, from top to bottom.
For Raonic, who left his Thornhill, Ont. home to spend three years training in Montreal as a teenager before turning pro.
For Pospisil, who’s serve and confidence is at an unmatched level at any time in his career.
And even for Peliwo, who turned heads this week while he practiced with Djokovic, Nadal and even Andy Murray. Nadal’s camp was said to have asked last year’s junior Wimbledon champ about his future plans.
It’s coming together, in the infancy stages, even if the graduation ceremony came four years before it was supposed to.
Saturday night, about 20 minutes before Nadal and Djokovic squared off in their 36th ever meeting – yet again a world class clash that also needed a third-set tiebreak to settle it, Raonic’s parents walked into a lounge overlooking centre court in Montreal.
“He didn’t play his best,” Vesna Raonic, Milos’s mother, said.
“Who cares?” roared Dusan, the retired engineer father, with a rare ear-to-ear grin. “He won.”
Their son wasn’t alone in victory. Canadian tennis won on the second week of August, 2013.
Saturday, it ended in emotion for the country’s top two stars. But, like any graduation, it’s only the beginning of a long journey.