New Balance promotion: tennis target practice, with Milos Raonic as the target!

ON THE ROAD TO WIMBLEDON – To set the scene, the walk from the nearest underground station, Southfields, to the All-England Club is about 10-12 minutes, depending on how quickly you walk.

Over the years, there has been an increasing number of companies targeting tennis fans along Wimbledon Park Road. A couple of years ago you could get a Facebook "thumbs-up" foam hand – except they wouldn't let you take it past the entrance gates. For years, Compeed (the blister band-aid company endorsed by Caroline Wozniacki) had rickshaw-type carriages to take people from the Tube to the site.

There are catalogues and flyers and a few ticket touts and a hamburger stand and a free bottle of Evian water (thanks, Maria Sharapova) and most recently, a StubHub stand. Added to that now is a New Balance booth, where they have a cage to measure how fast you can serve.

It stands in the driveway of quite a posh house at 386 Wimbledon Park Road; the owners of these houses tend to get out of town during the fortnight rather than deal with the traffic and the thousands of people walking by their front gate every day. They rent out these spaces to companies for a fair bit of cash. Or they rent the houses out entirely, to players and their entourages, for a fortune.

New Balance put a larger-than-life poster of a heavily Photoshopped Milos Raonic on the back wall of the serving cage, which means people step up and try to slam balls right at his face!

Here's what it looks like:

It's an interesting concept. Actually, it's kind of fun. But even virtual Milos doesn't have much to worry about. During the time your faithful Eh Game correspondent was watching, no one came close to ruining his lovely features; the closest they seemed to get was his left armpit.

The record speed, at that point, was 111 mph. The guys who were there when we stopped by had a hard time breaking 70 mph, try as they might.

If you show your Canadian passport at the stand, they'll give you a free red NB T-shirt, a replica of the type Raonic has worn during Davis Cup.