Part of the riddle that is Nick Kyrgios, sports psychologists say, is his apparent uncertainty about whether he wants to be a tennis player or an entertainer. There is no such conundrum for Milos Raonic, the driven, slightly mechanical but rapidly-coming-of-age Canadian whose childhood tennis idol was Pete Sampras.
"I don't care about perceptions. I care about getting the job done," Raonic, the newcomer to an otherwise-predictable Australian Open last four completed by Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and world No.2 Andy Murray, said on the eve of his maiden semi-final at Melbourne Park on Friday night. 
The 13th seed earnestly reels off the extraordinary tennis CV of Sampras, the American champion more famous for his results than his charisma. "There will always be an entertainer, but we're in a great generation right now where we see many great tennis players, and that's something more," Raonic says, "and that's what really matters to me."
The 25-year-old agrees "ambitious" is the best word to describe him, for he knows only a persistent single-mindedness when he sets his mind to something, anything. "At this point in my life that's tennis. After tennis I'm going to have to find something new, and it's not just about wanting to do things, it's everything I do," he says.
"Whether it be a game of cards or playing board games or whatever I want to be very good at it. And I make a process out of it; I don't just show up to do stuff, I prepare, and the last thing I want is to be caught unprepared in a situation I care about."
The paradox, says Raonic, is that while he may be too serious on the court, he can sometimes be "too joking" off it. But, still, he must manage the off-court stresses, and find a way to tune out from his job.
"I am very systematic in how need to go about things to bring out the best tennis for myself, and maybe that comes off as mechanical and robotic and those kind of things, but I don't know if I'd ever change that because I feel that's the way I get the best out of myself when it comes to my tennis," says the articulate engineers' son.
"Outside of the court, sometimes my mind goes too much. I've introduced meditation, writing ... to actually calm myself down so when I'm away from the tennis I can really just clear my mind and relax a bit more."
It will be Raonic's second grand slam semi-final, after Wimbledon in 2014, where he lost to Federer in straight sets, and this one will come against a supreme returner more capable than most of neutralising the challenger's biggest weapon. Yet the upside for Raonic is that, after an extended and productive pre-season in which his game has almost been transformed, improved movement, comfort at the net and confidence in his groundstrokes means that he is less reliant on the obvious then he once was. This is a different, calmer Raonic, too, he believes - one who made 80 net approaches in eliminating fourth seed Stan Wawrinka, then in the quarter-finals outplayed Gael Monfils more from the back of the court. He believes he is a far better and more advanced player technically, mentally and physically than when he reached the top four so briefly eight months ago, and has declared himself ready to make a big grand slam statement.
"I think making that (major) semi the first time was a feel-good thing that sort of happened and I ran with it," Raonic says. "Whereas this time I could have said that I expected it, and I think it was expected within my team as well, by everybody that knows where my tennis is truly at and what I look to get out of it. So I'm not running with anything this time, I'm running towards something."