Wimbledon shows how quickly today’s tennis stars fade into a pack of very good players chasing icons

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When Milos Raonic popped up at Wimbledon, it felt like a visit from the Ghost of Canadian Tennis Past.

He was returning after two years lost to injury. By his telling, he’d abandoned the sport in that time – not playing it, not watching it and not talking to people around it. He returned changed. Looser. More philosophical.

Pros often get this way once it’s over, but it’s unusual to see the switch occur mid-career. I guess two years is a long time when you’re unable to do the thing that defines you.

But while Raonic may have changed, the game hadn’t.

“It’s all the same people,” Raonic said.

He’s right and he’s wrong. Everybody’s the same, right up until everyone’s different. That’s how you let a whole generation get behind you.

Midweek, I wandered randomly into a legends game. This one featured a doubles team of Tommy Haas and Mark Philippoussis.

As usual, it is jarring to be reintroduced to athletes who are your contemporaries that you knew best in their primes. They both look great for their mid-40s, but it’s still a bit like a couple of Dorian Grey’s portraits breaking out of the attic and getting loose on a tennis court.

Haas and Philippoussis both came into the game destined for greatness, but never quite got there. Philippoussis lost two grand slam finals. Haas made a string of semis in majors.

And now here they are, stuck out on a minor court getting polite applause from people who dimly recall their names.

After another disappointing slam has passed, this is the challenge the current generation of Canadian tennis players faces – how to make sure you are remembered.

Ten years ago, we would have happily taken just good enough. Blame Raonic & Co. for changing our expectations.

The initial high-water mark – Eugenie Bouchard making a Wimbledon final in 2014. That was a revelation. We don’t have to just play this sport – we can be good at it, too?

Two years later – Raonic did the same thing. Canadian tennis wasn’t a fluke any more. It was a thing.

In 2019, the peak – Bianca Andreescu’s U.S. Open title.

Two years later, a reminder that this vein of talent was broad and ongoing – Leylah Fernandez’s U.S. Open final against Emma Radacanu. That looked like the future of the women’s game.

Since then, things have puttered along for Canada’s best. Most have lost significant time to injury. One of them, Félix Auger-Aliassime, enjoyed a month-long stretch last year where he seemed unbeatable. Unluckily, he did it in October, when everyone has stopped paying attention to tennis.

In the meantime, the global infatuation with Canadian tennis has worn off. Here at Wimbledon, our best were shunted onto exterior courts.

When Andreescu lost in the third round to eventual finalist, Ons Jabeur, it was the first time she’d ever played on Centre Court. That tells you how far she’s fallen on the international tennis heat scale.

“I love playing on big stages, so I think that helped me raise my level a little bit,” Andreescu said afterward.

She had looked good. For the first set. Having won it, you could feel the uncertainty creep into her game. It couldn’t have helped that the crowd was determined to push Jabeur, a huge fan favourite, through.

On the women’s side of things, the hierarchy feels more unsettled than usual – which is a lot.

The winner here, Marketa Vondrousova, had only won two matches on grass in her career. Then she won seven in a row when it really counted.

While Andresscu and Fernandez are still young by any reasonable standard (23 and 20, respectively), they aren’t young in tennis terms. Here at Wimbledon, the next presumptive international superstar, 16-year-old Mirra Andreeva, made her first big impression on the world.

Only in this sport can Fernandez, two years removed from her first slam final and looking to re-establish herself now, come across as a grizzled veteran.

On the men’s side, the gap between contenders and pretenders is extending.

Novak Djokovic lost in the final, but his performance only tended to burnish the credentials of the winner, Carlos Alcaraz.

At 36, Djokovic continues to play up here (places hand high above head). Now Alcaraz is playing here (goes to garage, gets stepladder, climbs to top of it, then puts hand over head). At this tournament at least, no one else was anywhere close to their league.

Canada’s best men’s performer was Denis Shapovalov. He got dismantled by the guy who got dismantled by the guy who got dismantled by Djokovic, who then got disassembled, if not exactly dismantled, by Alcaraz.

A couple of years ago, you could still believe that players like Shapovalov and Auger-Aliassime were right there. They don’t feel right there any more. They feel like they’re stuck in a trailing pack of very good players chasing an icons and a proto-icon.

Try to name a few contemporaries of Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe. Once you get past Jimmy Conners and Ivan Lendl, it’s not just tough – it’s impossible. There’s no room in the collective sports memory for athletes who weren’t consistently at the very, very top.

Tennis makes this a pernicious problem because it can seem like a career lasts forever. Haas, for instance, played pro for 20 years.

A mediocre tennis player still makes an absolute ton of money. Even in the middle, it’s a glamorous living. If you weren’t too much of a jerk during it, it can be extended for many years after you retire. Someone will always want to see you playing, even if you can barely get out there. Just touching that world briefly must be remarkable.

But if legacies are the goal, time is not your friend. Another next big thing is always about to surface. If you’re not already the current big thing, the odds that you’re going to get there are constantly diminishing.