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

Raonic loses to Petzschner in Halle but advances to the doubles final with Robin Haase

Philipp Petzschner (GER) defeated Milos Raonic in three sets at the Gerry Weber Open, 6-3  6(6)-7  6-3.

With the crowd behind him, Petzschner seemed to make everything in the first set. Milos was having a less than stellar performance on his serve, but he only faced one break point throughout the opening set. Unfortunately, Petzschner converted the point and put the set away in less than 30 minutes.

Raonic began to turn things around in the second set. He started to earn more free points off his serve, and was able to work his way into Petzschner's service games a little more frequently. Milos had multiple opportunities to break but the set ultimately had to be decided in a tiebreak. Petzschner jumped out to a 5-2 in the breaker before Raonic battled back and won it. The German was not pleased.

All the first serves in the world couldn't have prevented Petzschner from getting the early break in the third, who strung a few amazing points together to open up a 0-40 lead on Milos' first service game. From there, the German denied Raonic any chance of getting back on serve by continuing to serve well and put points away by approaching the net. The serve-volley technique was working for Petzschner, who always seemed to have an answer whenever Milos tried to pass him.

For his first ATP tour grass court event, Milos has shown a lot of potential. It is easy to forget just how inexperienced the Canadian is at this level, especially when we have such high expectations for him. Against most players, the serve alone would have been more than enough to get the job done today, but Petzschner was simply too good on too many points. More on the match here.  Video recap from gerryweber-open.de here.

Of course, Raonic is still in the doubles draw in Halle, and his semi-final match with Haase is scheduled for later today.

-multi

Milos Raonic & Robin Haase advance to finals with defeat of Aussie duo of Lleyton Hewitt & Peter Luczak 6(6)-7, 7-6(4), 10-5

With Raonic and Hewitt both having lost in their singles quarter-final matches earlier in the day, they battled with their doubles partners, Haase and Luczak respectively, to avoid a second loss.  While the Australians were able to win the first set tiebreak, the Dutch & Canadian duo stepped it up in the second half of the game to win with a final score of 6(6)-7, 7-6(4), 10-5.

from ATPWorldTour.com

Raonic & Haase will play in the finals on Sunday versus the winner of the other semi-final to be played on Saturday between the team of Rohan Bopann of India and Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi of Pakistan and the home-team German hopefuls of Christopher Kas and Philipp Kohlschreiber.  Of course, Kohlschreiber will play his semi-final singles match tomorrow as well... in fact the German fans will have a lot to cheer for tomorrow, with a German in all the semi-final matches on the order of play for the day.

- WACB