Milos Raonic – Canada Fan Blog an (unofficial) blog about tennis and Canadian player Milos Raonic

26Apr/11Off

Might Milos Raonic meet Fernando Verdasco in the Semi-Final at the Estoril Open in Portugal?

San José and Memphis

We all remember back in February when Milos Raonic beat Fernando Verdasco (ESP) back-to-back in the Finals of the SAP Open in San José and in their opening match of the Regions Morgan Keegan Championships in Memphis.  At match point in San José, Verdasco was visibly upset that a spectator apparently ruined the point by yelling during Milos' tournament-winning serve (see video below and article here).

Verdasco after back-to-back losses to Raonic

After losing the matches, Verdasco commented that "For me that's not a real match in tennis. I hope to play soon against him in clay court to show him what it is to play tennis, and play rallies, and run, and not [just] serve."  This prompted Chris Chase from Yahoo Sports to ask "if hard court tennis isn't "real" tennis, then are we to consider Verdasco's two non-clay tournament titles to be null and void? Does Roger Federer only have one Grand Slam title now? Did Rafael Nadal waste his time retooling his game to improve on grass and hard? Will history judge Pete Sampras to be a lesser player than Gaston Gaudio?" (link)

Since losing to Raonic back-to-back in February, Fernando Verdasco has won only one ATP match (d. Berankis (LTU) at Indian Wells) and his match at Davis Cup Round 1. He has dropped to #15 in the ATP rankings from #9 during the San José and Memphis tournaments.
I have to say I agree with Chris' sentiment there.  Hard courts are real tennis.

Possible Verdasco / Raonic Semi-Final match?

Milos has shown since those matches that he is very versatile and has also been performing well on the clay surface thus far in the season.  Verdasco's only match on clay since was a loss to fellow Spaniard Tommy Robredo in Monte Carlo.  His only wins since, at Davis Cup and at Indian Wells, were on the hard court surface.

If both players are able to win the requisite matches, their semi-final match will be a rematch of those played in Memphis and San José earlier this year.  It promises to be a very exciting match that both players would surely very much like to win!

...  But first, Milos will play later this afternoon (12:30 pm Eastern Time) against Igor Andreev (RUS) at the Estoril Open, a player that beat him earlier this year (head-to-head) - but as stated in an earlier post, Milos has come a long way since.

Go Milos!

Posted by wacb

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