"Kind of mess up with everybody's expectation of what is normal": Raonic admits downside to Big Three dominating tennis

Milos Raonic spoke about the dominance of Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, and Roger Federer over the last 15 years after his exit from the National Bank Open Toronto.

The Canadian tennis player had a good week at the Canadian Open, defeating 9th seed Frances Tiafoe in the first round and then Taro Daniel before falling in the round of 16 to American Mackenzie McDonald.

The former world No. 3 commented on the challenge of competing in an era alongside Djokovic, Nadal, Federer, and also Andy Murray:

“I don't know. For me, obviously, I haven't played enough of the top guys to know, but I would actually say it's a little bit the opposite,”

Raonic commented on how the Big 3 changed the history of tennis by excluding other great players from the past decades from the possibility of winning, and how they altered the spectators' perception of the performance expected from tennis players:

“I think just three guys, to have three exemplary kind of legendary athletes in one sport, not even in one generation, period, but in one sport at the same time, you kind of mess up with everybody's expectation of what is normal; right?” Raonic said

“If you look back at a lot of tournaments, yeah, you would have the three of them playing. Obviously, I'm talking, like, when all the three guys were taking Masters series seriously. I think, you know, we've kind of forgotten a little bit now because it's been kind of just a pure focus on Grand Slams for them for the last couple years,” he added.

“But when I was first on tour, it was pretty much them and Andy,”

The 33-year-old tennis player also mentioned that a new era of tennis is beginning, where we could see a variety of Grand Slam champions in the coming years, and not necessarily a dominance like what was seen with Big 3.

“Pretty much, I would say, 60 per cent, 70 per cent of the semi-finals were them. And maybe when it came to clay, David Ferrer was kind of the guy changing things up a little bit. So, yeah, you had three guys that were there all the time and winning most of the events.”

“But I think you were still seeing the same kind of thing, the rotation of guys from 16 to 5 in the world, let's say, that were kind of maybe losing early in events. You know, they weren't -- like, it's not like every week the top eight seeds were all in the quarters; right? So it's quite different,” Milos Raonic said.

“But tennis was quite different before Roger came around. And then, you know, I think it's just this kind of next period is probably what tennis -- obviously, Novak is still around, and he's still going to be very involved in later stages of Grand Slams.”

“I think it's kind of like what tennis was when Andre and Sampras were kind of aging out a little bit; right? You have a lot of different players that will win slams. And if you look at history and you just look at the trend, there's many players with one or two. And then, you know, the higher up you go with the numbers, the quantity of players there drops off. I think just three guys really messed with everybody's calibre -- or recalibration of what's normal,” he concluded