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

Raonic in Rome

The draw is out and Milos Raonic will play Fernando Verdasco (ESP) in the first round at the Internazionali BNL d'Italia in Rome this week.

And so the Raonic / Verdasco Saga continues... Until Raonic had retired during their last meeting at the Estoril Open, Milos had a perfect 2-0 head to head record against Verdasco. But those two matches didn't count according to Verdasco since they were played on hardcourt and, as we all know by now, it's only real tennis if it's played on the red clay.

All joking aside, it isn't an easy draw looking ahead for Milos. Awaiting Raonic should he advance to the second round is No.5 seed Robin Söderling (SWE), who isn't exactly a lightweight. There's also a possible third round match with Nicolas Almagro (ESP), but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Full disclosure: Raonic is situated in Novak Djokovic's (SRB) quarter of the draw. Djokovic came back from a set down to defeat a red-hot Thomaz Bellucci (BRA) in Madrid today, who left players such as Andy Murray (GBR) and Tomas Berdych (CZE) in his wake as he reached his first semi-final at an ATP 1000 Masters event.

The Raonic / Verdasco re-re-rematch will be last to go on Centrale on Sunday, May 8. The schedule for Rogers Sportsnet lists Monday (May 9) as the start of their TV coverage of the tournament in Rome. The finals in Madrid will be on Sportsnet One starting at 12:30PM ET on Sunday, so it is unclear if they'll be showing the Raonic match online or on TV. Who knows, they may pick it up at the last minute or show it on tape delay. If not, just surf on over to your favourite sports streaming website and watch it that way. And if all else fails, there's always the live scores ticker.

Since I don't know how to cheer someone on in Italian, I'll just keep it simple: Go Milos!

-multi