This past Sunday, at a relatively obscure professional tournament called the SAP Open in San Jose, I saw the future of tennis and its name is Milos Raonic.

Raonic, a 20 year old Canadian of Serbian descent, won his first pro event ever, beating world #9 Fernando Verdasco in the finals 7-6, 7-6. He has the kind of effortless yet explosive game I've seen one time before in someone so young: Pete Sampras way back in 1990.

Raonic's calling card is the same as Sampras' -- the serve. The motion is smooth, natural, and deadly. Without any apparent strain, he routinely nails the corners with 140 mph missiles.

So while first title was "only" the SAP Open, mark my words: some more "opens" are in the not-too-distant future.



Raonic's coming out party brings to mind five other "debuts" in which young players announced their arrival in the men's game with breathtaking results. Here they are:

5. Bjorn Borg, 1974 WCT Championships, Dallas. I was there in 1974 when Borg got to the finals of what was then the "5th Major" in Dallas, losing only to John Newcombe in the championship match. At the time, we all thought that with his unique style of game, his arm would fall off. Instead, he won 11 Grand Slam titles and today, just a generation and a half later, Borg's tennis is the new orthodoxy as virtually all players use his semi-Western, open stance forehand and two handed backhand.



4. Mats Wilander, French Open 1982. Borg had suddenly retired and most tennis experts thought that was the end of Swedish domination on clay. Not so fast. Wilander was just a teenager when he beat Guillermo Vilas to win it all. Love the Rossignol racket!



3. John McEnroe, 1977 Wimbledon. It's hard to believe that John McEnroe ever "came out of nowhere"; it's as if he's always been here. Yet as an 18 year old rising freshman at Stanford, he emerged from the obscurity of the qualifying tournament at Wimbledon to advance all the way to the semi-finals, where he lost to Jimmy Connors. At the time, I remember thinking he wasn't even the best American teenager playing -- I figured his peers Larry Gottfried and Ben McKown were better. Um, I was wrong. A year later he won the NCAA as a freshman and a year after that, won his first of four U.S. Opens.



2. Boris Becker, Wimbledon 1985. By odd chance, I saw 17 year old Boris Becker win a small grass court tournament the week before Wimbledon began. And I thought (but unfortunately didn't bet) "if he plays like that at Wimbledon, he'll win the whole thing." He did and he did. We'd never seen a serve quite like that before . . .




1. . . . but we saw one better five years later as Pete Sampras came from nowhere to win his first of five U.S. Opens in 1990. I remember thinking there was NO WAY Andre Agassi could lose that final. But Sampras delivered bomb after bomb right up the service line "T" and Agassi was reduced to bystander status. The rest of the career is 14 Grand Slams worth of history.

It's Super Bowl week.

I don't have much invested in who wins between the Steelers and the Packers. One thing for sure: there will be a lot of gold at Cowboys Stadium on Sunday night.

But there have been times when I've had quite a bit of emotional investment in the Super Bowl's outcome. So here are my top five memories of the new American holiday:

5. January 1979 -- Steelers 35 Cowboys 31. The Cowboys were the defending champs but those of us from Dallas always feared the Steelers were really better. This day they proved it. I remember watching the game at the home of a girl I liked (but who didn't return the favor). I also remember Jackie Smith's drop in the end zone:



4. January 1989 -- 49ers 20 Bengals 16. For the three years we lived in central Kentucky, the Cincinnati Bengals were my adopted team. In the 1988 season, they rode Boomer Esiason's passing and Ickey Woods' shuffle all the way to the Super Bowl where they played the 49ers, long my least-favorite team. The Bengals led throughout and I still remember the devastation I felt when John Taylor caught this game winning pass with less than 90 seconds left:



3. January 1969 -- Jets 16 Colts 7. My parents always taught me to root for the underdog. The Colts were favored by 18 points against the upstarts from the AFL. I loved the boldness of Joe Namath's guarantee and then watched in delight as he backed it up. This is the first Super Bowl I remember watching from beginning to end.



2. January 1972 -- Cowboys 24 Dolphins 3. This game brought such relief to Dallas. After years of being "next year's champions," the Cowboys at long last became this year's winners. Tom Landry, Roger Staubach, Bob Lilly, and Duane Thomas designed and then played a near perfect game, one that left fans completely free of any nail biting.



1. February 2004 -- Patriots 32 Panthers 29. The nail biting I missed in 1972 was more than present in 2004. Can you believe the Panthers actually made the Super Bowl? What a great season: Jake Delhomme, Steve Smith, Stephen Davis, and here, catching a Super Bowl record 85 yard pass, Muhsin Muhammed. Alas, the Patriots had Tom Brady and Adam Vinatieri and the good guys lost in the waning moments.