​Inside the Mind of Milos Raonic

"I think I'm the best server in the world," Milos Raonic declared last week.

On the face of it, the statement comes across as slightly provocative, perhaps a touch cocky. But it's one that Raonic still believes, despite a disappointing third round loss to the precocious young Aussie Nick Kyrgios. Indeed, without such a weapon in his armory, Raonic would almost certainly not have made the final 32 at all, such was his state of fitness heading into this year's Championships after missing 10 weeks of the season with a foot injury.

"He only had about 45 minutes of tennis in him," admitted Raonic's otherwise bullish coach Ivan Ljubicic, as he trudged back from Court 2 towards the player's lounge. "He's just not match fit yet. If he'd gone two sets to love up today, maybe, just maybe he might have had a chance with his serve, but there was no way he could last five sets."

In a second round win over Tommy Haas, Raonic clocked the third fastest serve in Wimbledon history. Novak Djokovic once described the experience of facing the Canadian's delivery as feeling totally "helpless," even on the relatively slow clay of Roland Garros.

It would be easy to misread Raonic's belief in his serving ability as arrogance. But he simply speaks with the unshakeable conviction of a man who is convinced he belongs right at tennis' top table and will do anything he can to he stays there.

Raonic, the son of Montenegrin parents, emigrated to Canada with his family when he was just 3.

"We're raised on one idea, when you want something, you will get it and that's it," he says. It's the eve of Wimbledon, when we meet on a rooftop terrace opposite the player's restaurant, ducking under an umbrella from the abrupt glare of the English summer sun.

Raonic, standing at an imposing 6-foot-5, is dressed in a red tracksuit and baseball cap. He speaks quickly and articulately, devoting full concentration to each and every question. Familiar faces wander past the gaggle of adjacent TV crews, filling the air with the muffle of various interviews. Raonic pays them little attention. Tennis is business for him, and there is no room for distractions.

"We're raised to believe you're not entitled to anything," he continues. "You're not deserving of anything. You just go out and get it on your own. And that mentality goes way beyond tennis. I just approach life that way with many different things."

Raonic currently sits at No. 8 in the rankings. Last month he briefly broke into the world's top four for the first time in his career, emulating the achievements of Ljubicic, who was ranked No.3 back in 2006.

"Milos has that background through his parents but he has his own personality which is an interesting mixture of American Canadian and Eastern European," Ljubicic says. "He's very quiet and very, very determined. I don't think somebody can be more driven to succeed than him, he's really 24/7 focused on a goal and he sees only that. He's the kind of perfectionist you see often at the top of the sport and business worlds. He knows exactly what he wants, he goes for it exactly 100 percent, and anything which isn't related to the goal is a distraction."

Raonic attributes his competitiveness to his brother Momir, nine years his senior. "Even with that big age gap, I was competitive with him when we were play fighting, whatever, every single little thing," he says, breaking into a smile. "That's one benefit of having a good age gap with a sibling, it instills that in you. Not nine years older though, he was very good to me. I think he was going very light!"

But while both brothers had the same upbringing, they developed very different outlooks on life. "My brother is the kind of person who's grateful for what he has and he really focuses on that," Raonic explains. "I'm not saying I'm not but I always feel that I'm looking for something more and I feel that's where we differ. I really appreciate what I have but I always think that I'm capable of something more."

In that sense Raonic is more similar to his parents, both engineers who left post-Cold War Yugoslavia with their three children in 1993 to seek a new life. "I'm probably a more extreme version of them. But they did it for the benefit of us, the kids. I've just done it, in a way through more selfish motives."

Obsessed with tennis as a teenager, he practiced every hour he could around school, but he struggled to find anyone willing to take to the courts at 6 a.m. or 9 p.m. And so alone with his childhood coach Casey Curtis and father Dusan, he served again, and again and again.

"Practice usually consisted of an hour and a half of just serving," he remembers. "Dad would pick up the balls. Casey believed I would always be quite tall and watching Pete (Sampras), my idol, sort of made me realize the importance of a good serve."

While the Raonic serve is known for its fearsome power—one delivery at the 2012 Rogers Cup in Toronto clocked 155 mph, the fourth fastest of all time—it is the accuracy which gives it potency. With returners like Djokovic and Murray possessing the agility and anticipation to pick a serve almost before it leaves the racket, pace alone isn't enough. "The pace definitely helps me but if I hit that hard and I didn't know where it was going or if it was too close to the guys, I don't think it would be that relevant," Raonic agrees.

It was those extended childhood serving sessions which drilled the ability to hit spots on the court with metronomic precision into Raonic's biomechanics. To keep going for an hour and a half, he was forced to take pace off the ball and instead aim for the lines, motions he rehearsed with a meticulous zeal.

That zeal has taken him to the top ten and over $4 million in prize money, but as ever, Raonic wants more. To help him achieve more, Ljubicic believes his role is to temper Raonic's intensity, not easy when he's in a restless mood after losing precious time to injury. Such are the fine margins in men's tennis, striking the right balance between practicing and recovering can make the difference between a outstanding season and a largely average one. But Raonic, who has been known to get angry when he sees a member of his team texting during practice, isn't exactly one for relaxation.

"For us, his team, the tough part is to get him to rest," Ljubicic says. "This is the difficult part with Milos. I know it sounds funny, but it's not easy sometimes because for him, with his personality and character, more is better. You have to get the most out of every single moment. And with his physique and the way he plays this is not always the case. Sometimes you need to push on quality rather than quantity, but this doesn't come naturally to him."

Ljubicic's philosophy is that it is impossible to change the personality of the player, and even trying to do so is counterproductive. Instead, he believes the job of a coach should be to work with it, understand it and most importantly, help the player understand themselves, both the advantages and limitations of their psyche. In that respect, his role over the past three years has almost been part coach-part shrink.

For Raonic to take the next step and beat a player like Djokovic or Murray over five sets, Ljubicic believes he needs to understand himself more deeply to cope with the unique pressures that come with those matches.

"When you're under pressure, when you're nervous, you need to know and anticipate your reactions to that and adjust accordingly," he says. "You need to know what you're capable of doing in those moment and what you can't do. This comes with experience and getting to know yourself, asking yourself questions, analyzing your own feelings and thoughts. The more mature you are, the more you accept your weaknesses rather than running away and hiding from them. And once you're ok with that and you realize that having weaknesses isn't the end of the world, then you can work on them."

While Raonic may struggle to let go and disengage from tennis, Ljubicic says he's far from stubborn and in fact an excellent listener. He believes that his charge's growing understanding of such psychology has led to his improvement over the last 18 months.

"Milos is not stubborn," he says. "It's why it's very easy to make progress with him. Yes he gets angry sometimes, like everyone who's trying to get better. But my goal is to make him think when he's feeling those emotions, and keep the balance right when things are not great."

Raonic was desperately disappointed with his semi-final loss to Roger Federer at SW19 last year, frustrated that he was unable to bring his best tennis to the occasion, perhaps overwhelmed by his own high expectations.

Twelve months later, he had been determined to banish those memories. But in a small interview tucked away at the back of the All England Club, Raonic discussed his disappointment that his body had not allowed him to fully compete. Still, one could sense some of Ljubicic's attempts to provide a wider perspective on life filtering slowly through.

"It's disappointing," he said. "I wanted this tournament to last longer. I still have some discomfort in my feet, and that led to pains in the ankle, the hip and then the back. The more I got through the match, the more difficult it was. But it is what it is. I have the next challenges ahead of me. I just need to keep pushing myself every day to continue the recovery and face it head on."

When fully fit, Ljubicic believes Raonic is capable of getting into the world's top three or higher. But perhaps when it comes to the majors, it also takes the ability to switch off away from the court to stay the course for the full two weeks. "It's still difficult (to relax him)," Ljubicic smiles wryly. "But when you say the right things at the right time in the right way, he gets it really, really quickly and it's easy to make progress with him. I much prefer working with this type of character than someone where every morning I have to be like, 'Ok, get up. Time to go. Lets go!'"