To The Final But No Further

There was no escape hatch for Milos Raonic to climb through this time.

Facing his third top 20 player in a row after saving multiple match points in his previous two matches, the 21-year-old Raonic fell behind early to Japan's Kei Nishikori and this time could not fight all the way back, losing a 7-6 (5), 3-6, 6-0 verdict in Tokyo on Sunday.

The third set result was ugly, and the 22-year-old Nishikori broke Raonic's feared serve four times in the match after the Canadian had held serve on 42 of 43 occasions entering the match. But it was a historic match as well, as Nishikori, a national sports figure in Japan, became the first from his country to win the 40-year-old Japan Open in outplaying the higher-ranked Canadian.

"I'd thought the Gods were against me at this event in the past," said Nishikori after collecting $308,000 and a year's supply of Corona beer for the win.

It was the youngest final of the ATP season between two "next generation" players, and also a collision between two players who have put their respective countries on the tennis map in recent years by their results.

Raonic towered over the smaller Nishikori, but the Japanese player, ranked No. 17 in the world compared to No. 14 for Raonic, had the bigger game on the day. Having seen Raonic fight from match point down to beat two top 10 players, Janko Tipsarevic (No. 9) and Andy Murray (No. 3), Nishikori came into the match having clearly done his homework.

He denied Raonic access to the wicked inside-out forehand that figured so prominently in the upset win over Murray, kept the Canadian from getting to the net as frequently as he had against the Scot and used a short diagonal passing shot from the backhand side to great effect. In the first set, at times Raonic seemed a little baffled by his opponent's speed and tactical smarts, and uncharacteristically struggled to command his serve throughout after starting the match with a blazing 228 kilometre-and-hour ace.

There were only 13 more aces from Raonic on the day. He did win the second set and looked to have momentum, but it was all Nishikori in the final set, who was able throughout the match to take the ball early and keep Raonic on his heels. Down 2-0 in the third, Raonic clunked an easy volley at the net, a sign that he wasn't going to be able to mount another comeback on this day.

The final serving numbers told the tale; Raonic won only a mediocre 71 per cent of his first serve points, very low for him, and a dreadful 38 per cent of his second serve points. Nishikori, who makes up for the lack of big weapons with uncommon quickness around the court, had 10 break point chances in the match.

Raonic talked at Wimbledon after losing to Sam Querrey about learning how to win when he wasn't playing his best. For a time on Sunday, this looked like that would be the story of the match against Nishikori, at least until the Japanese star steamrolled his opponent in the final set.

Clutching a bouquet of yellow roses presented by 1973 Japan Open champion Ken Rosewall that he joked were destined for his coach Galo Blanco on his birthday, a gracious Raonic, who referred to his love for sushi that has followed him "all the way back home in Toronto," complimented Nishikori in the post-match remarks but also didn't seem discouraged by his best result in three years at the event and sixth career ATP final.

"I think we're making progress by this result," he said. 

Raonic was favoured against Nishikori after the exciting come-from-behind win over Murray on Saturday. The combination of Nishkori's smarts, the supportive if not raucous pro-Nishikori crowd and the challenge of finding the same emotional level against Nishikori as he had against Murray proved too much for the youngster from Thornhill.

The good news was that his much-improved return of serve was still there against Nishikori, clearly a building block as Raonic takes aim at the top 10.

Raonic still has an outside chance of qualifying for the prestigious ATP World Finals in London in early November featuring the eight top players on the tour, but would need an excellent result at the Shanghai Masters this week to have much of a chance. All the best players in the world, except injured Rafa Nadal, are on hand after being split among smaller events last week.

Raonic starts off against a qualifier and is in tough in the same half of the draw as Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Novak Djokovic, who met in the final of the China Open on Sunday with Djokovic winning in straight sets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Massive Win For Milos

Davis Cup excellence helped make Novak Djokovic into No. 1 in the world. Just ask Djokovic. He'll tell you.

Well, maybe it can do similar wonders for Canada's Milos Raonic.

Less than a month after he delivered two dominating singles performances that lifted Canada past South African and into the Davis Cup World Group for 2013, Raonic made a statement in the Far East that will be heard around the tennis world.

He didn't just beat U.S. Open winner and Olympic champion Andy Murray for the second time this year.

He came from behind to do it on Saturday in a semifinal clash in Tokyo at the Japan Open. In fact, he came from two match points down to win a three-set thriller 6-3, 7-6 (5), 7-6 (4).

And he did it by demonstrating the same thing that he demonstrated at Davis Cup in Montreal last month, namely that he's a lot more than just a big server.

Murray had only lost one match since losing the Wimbledon final in July, and leading 4-1 in the third set, it sure looked like he wasn't about to add another defeat to his record. He was in full control, or so it seemed.

But Raonic charged back, breaking Murray to get back on serve, then shaking off two seemingly costly double-faults in the 12th game of the set to force a third set tiebreak. The volley he made to win that game after saving the two match points was breathtaking, and symbolic of his performance on the day.

This was a day, you see, that Raonic owned the net.

When Murray beat him convincingly at the U.S. Open, the Scot was able to get away with slicing back shots and drifting balls back that Raonic wouldn't attack. In Tokyo, Raonic lived at the net, repeatedly putting away volleys and overheads, and continuing to attack even when Murray passed him or forced him into errors.

The Canadian returned serve superbly, much better than he had in New York, and refused to back off the baseline, hitting his backhand more aggressively to push Murray back. Raonic had "only" 13 aces, low by his standards, and it was the rest of his game that lifted him to victory.

He also beat Murray on clay in Barcelona earlier this year.

Raonic will face Japanese star Kei Nishikori in the final. A victory will help Raonic keep alive his faint hopes of qualifying for the year-ending ATP World Tour Finals in London.

 

Money and Meaning

It's a weird scenario.

Let's say the Blue Jays look at the Oakland Athletics and desire to be just like them after watching Billy Beane's club wildly celebrate a totally unexpected and totally thrilling divisional title yesterday.

First thing, to mimic the A's, would be to slash the payroll. By about 25 per cent. The A's won the AL West with the second lowest payroll in the sport, about $55 million, while the Jays had arguably the worst season in team history with $74 million-plus spent on players.

Weird, but the A's knocked off Texas, a team with more than twice the payroll. Also weird that a few teams - take the Minnesota Twins and their $94 million payroll or Miami and their whopping $118 million payroll - spent significantly more than the Jays and got nowhere with it. The Washington Nationals are in the post-season after having spent about $6 million more than the Jays. So what does that mean?

So it's not JUST about money, just like this lost season wasn't JUST about injuries. There's about 500 variables here.

But somewhere in all of this is an awkward truth, and that is that one of those variables is the politics of the individual cities, the way in which the marketplace feels about the local squad, the optics of what the team does, doesn't do, has done and hasn't done.

Here in Toronto, Rogers faces a hard-to-shake perception that it hasn't spend enough on players to put a winning team on the field. When you're 23trd in the majors in payroll and you've had the kind of disappointing season the jays have just had, that perception becomes stronger, particularly in a city where attendance and TV numbers are up.

So the answer, clearly, is that the Jays must spend, even if they don't want to and have nothing really of impact to spend on.

Spend they must.

One is left to wonder - and it's clearly with loads of hindsight - whether if they were to do it all again the ballclub would have gone much, much harder after Yu Darvish, who has proven (so far) to have been a sound investment for the Rangers last summer.

GM Alex Anthopoulos has never said what the Jays bid, but sources suggest it was about $15-20 million, not remotely competitive with the $51.7 million the Rangers ponied up for the young right-handed power pitcher.

Clearly the Jays didn't want to aggressively be in that market, and they have their reasons and policies. But imagine if they had. They'd have a pitcher with lots of future and would have been able to silence the doubters that proclaim Rogers won't spend even if the 2012 season hadn't gone well.

Heck, imagine if they'd fallen a hair short of landing Darvish and let the world know about it. Again, perceptions would have been changed.

Now, they face an off-season with greater pressure to spend - $100 million seems to be the number, which would put them close to the top 10 - without a Darvish or anything close to spend on.

But the politics and perceptions of the market say spend they must, without much guarantee at all it will get them anywhere.

 

 

 

 

 

Another Reason Not To Hope

If you imagine that as soon as the paycheques for NHL players aren't arriving that the hints of mutiny will begin to appear, you might be right. This is, after all, the flimsiest of unions that turned inwards upon itself in a spectacular civil war just seven years ago.

The fact players in increasing numbers are fleeing the fight and heading to Europe every day tells you all you need to know about NHLPA unity.

But this fact is also true; there won't be a mutiny this time.

Not because the players are any more dedicated to each other or the cause.

There's just no way to make it happen, or no easy way, at least. Why? Well, because in attempting to establish a democracy within the NHLPA, an iron-fisted dictatorship has been created.

They toppled Bob Goodenow last time, tore down his statue in city square. Don Fehr, who knows Goodenow well, won't be letting that happen to him.

Fehr, you'll recall, consulted the union when it was going through the process of instituting internal structural change after the political decapitation of Paul Kelly.

Back in the '04-05 lockout, the NHLPA gave responsibility to a seven-man negotiating committee, which worked with Goodenow. After the shocking proposal to give back 24 per cent of player salaries went out, one most players weren't aware of when it was proferred, the negotiating committee led by Trevor Linden started feeling the heat. The body was small enough that eventually it was turned, albeit not until after the season was lost.

Then came the Ted Saskin affair, and then came the disastrous imposition of a structure in which Kelly was made boss and surrounded by people dedicated to his ouster, like Eric Lindros and Ian Penny. After Kelly was fired, a new effort was started to organize the union, and ultimately Fehr was brought in to help.

Now he's benefitting from that which he helped organize. No more ombudsmen and player reps and internal counsels to bring down an NHLPA executive director. And no more chance of mutiny because there's no small negotiating body dealing with the owners.

Now it's 30 team reps to work with Fehr, and that's it. That's why over the course of the summer 72 different players participated in the "bargaining," frustrating to the league since very few had a solid grasp of the issues because they were in and out so often. Steve Montador has been the most committed of the players, but he has no more power than any other player, really.

Power has been diffused to such a great extent within the union that no individual but Fehr has muscle now. So this standoff - blame the owners if you want, but neither side is negotiating - will go on for as long as Fehr believes it must.

The owners have proposed drastic change, the players have basically proposed little or no change and for the owners to solve their problems by reaching into each other's pockets. The union's position is basically to say "no," and while that is understandable against the very, very questionable demands of owners who care not a fig for the sport itself, it doesn't advance the process much. Not only will there not be any 24 per cent rollback offers, right now it appears the union won't be offering anything, period. Not for the forseeable future.

At some point, if weeks turn into months, players will start grumbling. But they'll have nowhere to go with their grumbling, outside of their own player rep. Then that rep, if he were like-minded, would have to convince another 15 player reps that change was required before a serious movement could start. Individuals can take to Twitter, but it won't get them anywhere.

Last time, pressure could be brought to bear against Linden and the negotiating committee by various superstars. Now? The NHLPA structure is basically mutiny-proof.

For those players who never want to repeat the collapse of 2005, that's good news.

But for anyone who believes the end to this lockout lies in the union cracking, there's almost no chance of that happening. Fehr helped set this union up the way its set up, and as the person now in charge, it's made him bulletproof. This negotiation is about Fehr and his brother, Steve - believed by many to be his hand-picked successor as agreed to by the union as a condition of Fehr's hiring - as much as it is about commissioner Gary Bettman.

The owners won't turn on Bettman. And the players can't turn on the Fehr Bros.

So there won't be hockey in October and November. Maybe none at all.

 

 

 

 

 

Injury Alibi Loses Steam

If there's good news to all the bad, bad news surrounding the Blue Jays, it's that nobody can argue any longer that this lost season was all simply caused by injuries.

Injuries, of course, played a part. But as has been argued here for a while, injuries have also been used as an all-encompassing excuse by the Blue Jays and some supporters, and recent times have made it crystal clear there are many other areas that require attention.

The Escobar episode both opened questions about the attitude of some of the team's key young players - Brett Lawrie ended up the focus this past weekend - and made it obvious that the team's internal leadership system had either failed or was insufficient from the start.

Going into this season, nobody was wondering aloud whether this team plays the game the right way. Now, led by the words of former catcher Greg Zaun, everybody seems to be wondering why they don't play the game the right way.

The departure of Travis Snider and some fine subsequent work by Sportsnet writer Shi Davidi has made some wonder about the way the Jays are developing their young players. John Farrell's managing has come under scrutiny, increasingly so as the possibility the Bosox want him has become an issue. 

Finally, the struggles of Anthony Gose and Adeiny Hecchevaria at the plate - that's not at all to write either player off - has illustrated that the youth the Jays are banking on isn't guaranteed to succeed, or at least not on the timetable they want. With Gose, Hecchevaria and Drew Hutchison having all been used at the major league level and Snider now a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates, there now isn't the next wave of Jays youngsters available to come in next season. 

Of course the injuries hurt. But there are other issues Alex Anthopoulos has to deal with aggressively. The open-ended goodwill that greeted the Jays at spring training this year won't be there next spring.

In other news:

If the NHLPA really wants to open a PR offensive, it should have individual players openly questioning the motives of individual owners. Just slamming Gary Bettman will never work. He's paid to take the crap. But if Brad Richards starts questioning why James Dolan needs to have a lockout, or if Claude Giroux takes some verbal swings at Ed Snider, or if Zdeno Chara challenges Jeremy Jacobs to explain himself, it might turn public pressure on those owners in the same way it used to do in the pre-cap era when owners were often questioned for not spending enough. Blaming Bettman for a third lockout - like the PA had nothing at all to do with all three - won't get the union anywhere if it wants to wage a propaganda war. . .Maria Sharapova says she's 100 per cent behind a move to lower the screeching in women's tennis. Just as long as it doesn't affect her, of course. Start with the kids, she agrees. This will take years, if it ever really takes root. . .Right now, the Bills against Seattle at the Rogers Centre is looking like a tough, tough sell. . .The inside suggestion was that when Winnipeg defensive back Brandon Stewart was assessed a taunting penalty in the first quarter of the Argo-Bombers game on Saturday, it may have been because he used the n-word to congratulate a teammate as African-American athletes sometimes will do. An official heard the word, may have thought it was being directed at Argo receiver Dontrelle Inman, and threw the flag. Stewart, for the record, claimed he said nothing to Inman. Not sure how to sort that one out, but the penalty cost Winnipeg a touchdown. . .The new Winnipeg football stadium, by the way, looks fabulous. Now they just have to get the damn thing built. . .Still waiting to see what new Hamilton stadium will look like. Tick tock, tick tock. . .If the NHL announced the move of the Phoenix Coyotes to Quebec City tomorrow, it would in one stroke eliminate the NHLPA's complaint that the league is only willing to address the struggles of have-not teams off the backs of players. . .Not feeling Trudeau-mania 2.0 just yet. . .Just last week Mitt Romney wondered aloud about why you can't roll the windows down on airplanes while his wife said she worried about his mental well-being if he became president. This is one of the great car wreck candidacies of our time. And still he might win. . . The solution for Nazem Kadri is simple; play great, and no one will talk about your body fat or your diet. . .Player after player headed to Europe says "I've just gotta play." Jeff Skinner, meanwhile, seems to say that's not the case. He won't report to Carolina's AHL team, with the team's permission. . .This Friday, we get to see if baseball's new wild card format creates excitement. It should. One game playoffs can be a blast. . .There is no better advertisement for the CFL than television shots of fans at Saskatchewan home games. There's a passion there that rivals anything you'll see at a hockey game in this country. . .Given the events of the past 18 months, I'm uncomfortable with an NHL enforcer telling the world he's getting hammered as he tweets about all his physical pain and injuries. . .I've always liked watching Buck Pierce play. I just don't want to see him get hit anymore. . .That's one nasty Twitter war going on between Milt Stegall and Ricky Foley. . .The Kingston Frontenacs, managed by Doug Gilmour and coached by Todd Gill, are perfect in the early days of the OHL schedule. . .Leaf prospect Tyler Biggs has four goals in his first five games with the first place Oshawa Generals. . .Connor McDavid is doing fine out of the gate in Erie with six points in five games. . .The last embarrassment for the NFL in its replacement referee disaster was having to pay all 112 of em for Week 4 for not working. . .Remember the days when Jays fans could at least chortle at the Baltimore Orioles? Those days are gone. . .Eric Tillman, in an interview with Terry Jones of SunMedia, had an interesting take on trading away Rickey Ray. "With Ricky as our starting quarterback this club had only one winning season of the last five years before Kavis (Reed) was hired as our head coach. As good as Ricky was on an individual basis, we we’re brought in to fix a team problem." . . .Does this old heart good to see the Irish coming in at No. 9. Tough part of schedule starts now.