In fact, Canada’s best player expects the first-time grand slam successes of last year to continue when the Australian Open begins. First matches in Melbourne are Monday, or late Sunday for North American audiences.

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Stanislas Wawrinka and Marin Cilic broke through in 2014, winning the Australia and U.S. Opens, respectively.

Wawrinka’s success in Melbourne marked the first time since the 2009 U.S. Open, which Juan Martin del Potro won, someone outside Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray won grand slam tournaments.

Raonic believes that can continue, with himself, Japan’s Kei Nishikori and Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov the most likely candidates.

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“I think we can step up and give ourselves a possibility to win at the bigger tournaments,” he told a media conference on Sunday.

“But I don’t think there’s going to be somebody stepping up like Roger, Rafa and Novak did a few times winning three out of four slams.

“I think there will be an opportunity for one of us to step up and have an opportunity to win their first slam.”

Raonic enters Aussie as the No. 8 seed. On the women’s side, Canada’s Eugenie Bouchard is No. 7. Those high seeds are rarities for Canadian players, but their improving play shows they are worthy.

Raonic, 24, believes those yet to win a grand slam, but are challenging, are approaching “peak maturity.”

Although he reached the Brisbane International final to begin his season, Raonic lost to Federer.

Raonic is happy with his form and said he had put plenty of time into the mental side of the game.

“I feel like I’m playing well. I feel like I’m able to sort of organize my game and do the things I want to do, which is important,” he said.

“We spent a lot of time working on fitness. We spent a lot of time, through discussion, working on the mental side of things, how I want to deal with things, especially at important moments against top players. All these kind of things.

“We had about three-and-a-half weeks to really sort of just buckle down and put in the work.”