Milos Raonic was supposed to take on Holger Rune at the 2024 Canadian Open in Montreal, but after warming up, he was forced to withdraw.
Raonic is still an active tennis player, even though he has not been playing weekly. He is playing here and there, some of the bigger events, but we don't really know how long that will last.
However, when he does play, he plays on a very competitive level. The Paris Olympics certainly wasn't a bad outing, but it's not going to last for many more years. His next event was supposed to be this week's Canadian Open, but unfortunately, he won't be playing at the ATP Masters 1000 tournament in his home country.
He had a good run at the event last year, but this year, things didn't work out that well. He was forced to withdraw from the match against Rune. After withdrawing, Raonic explained what had happened and why he decided not to play the event in a press conference.
"It was a pretty shitty feeling, but I tried to warm up for my match today. The thing that was the most difficult was to serve. Yeah, I don't think I would have been able to be competitive by any means."
"I can manage a lot of things, but without serving, that would be a tough day for me. So just had pain down my shoulder and got to see where it's at."
Raonic based much of his career around his serve, and not being able to serve would have lowered his chances significantly. Having pain in the shoulder is never comfortable, but it didn't come up suddenly.
He has been dealing with it ever since he returned from Paris back onto the hard courts, but he tried to give it away. After warming up, it became clear that he couldn't play, which is unfortunate.
"Yeah, it came up initially right when I came here on hard courts after the clay. I was playing points the other days, and I was kind of having similar feeling. Took some days off trying to kind of feel better about it. It just wasn't anywhere close to where I need it to be."
For Raonic, missing out on the home event is devastating because this event is largely why he plays. Tournaments like this one and the upcoming US Open are tournaments where he hoped to do well.
Raonic confirmed to the media that he will need to get more tests to identify the issue more precisely, and after that, he will likely decide about his participation in the season's last major.
"Yeah, they say I need more tests. That's the thing. We were checking a few things. So they were saying I just need to kind of have a chance to do an MRI, which wasn't possible to this point."