LONDON: Canadian Milos Raonic will not be the only man experiencing something new on Wimbledon’s Centre Court on Sunday — for the first time Britain’s Andy Murray will start a Grand Slam final as favourite after crushing Tomas Berdych in the semis.

Murray was seeded to meet world number one Novak Djokovic in another major showdown but the Serb’s shock early exit opened the door for sixth seed Raonic to reach his maiden Grand Slam final after making the semis two years ago.

All 10 of Murray’s previous grand slam finals were against either Djokovic or Federer, which explains why the 29-year-old Scot has endured more than his fair share of pain and still only has two majors to his name.

One of those defeats came against a sublime Federer in the 2012 Wimbledon final and a repeat of that duel was expected until the Swiss maestro lost to Raonic on Friday.

With a 6-3 head-to-head career lead over the 25-year-old Raonic, Murray will be expected to get his Grand Slam collection rolling again, three years after beating Djokovic to become Britain’s first Wimbledon men’s singles champion for 77 years.

And if Murray needed any more convincing that this will be the year when he adds to his 2012 US Open and 2013 Wimbledon titles it’s seeing Ivan Lendl back in his coaching corner.

It was the Czech who oversaw the Briton’s triumphs in New York and London.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I obviously had the best years of my career with him,” Murray said after breezing past Czech 10th seed Berdych.

“I obviously wanted to work with Ivan again to try to help me win these events. That’s the goal.

“It’s obviously an opportunity. I put myself in a position to try and win the event again.It’s against someone new that I’m playing against in the final.”

Murray’s most recent encounter with the big-serving Raonic came in the pre-Wimbledon warm-up event at Queen’s Club when he beat him in a fiercely-contested final having trailed.

Raonic has played two tough five-setters to reach the final, against David Goffin in round four and Friday’s thriller with Federer, whereas Murray’s path has been relatively smooth.

A two-hour semi-final against Berdych, in which he made only nine unforced errors for a 6-3, 6-3, 6-3 win, was about as stress-free as it gets at the business end of a Grand Slam tournament.

“Andy is one of the premier workaholics,” said Raonic who was a beaten semi-finalist in 2014.

“I think Andy tries to get you doing a lot of different things. He’ll try to throw you off, give you some slower balls, some harder balls, all these kinds of things. I guess my goal is to keep him away from that, play it on my terms, be aggressive, not hesitate.”

Raonic was asked what sort of a boost his debut in a major final might be for Canadian tennis.

“It’s great to sort of be at the center and front of that come Sunday. I’m glad that I’ve sort of been leading this charge, the first one to break through and really put these things together,” he said. “But I’m by no means done.”

Published in Dawn, July 10th, 2016