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

Raonic to be seeded No.23 at the Australian Open

Fresh off the title win at the Aircel Chennai Open, we have just learned that Milos Raonic will be the No.23 seed at the 2012 Australian Open. Here is a complete list of the men's seeds. Raonic moved up six places from 31 to 25 when the ATP Rankings were updated this week. He also joked that he is currently tied with Murray and Tsonga for first place in the ATP points race. I wonder how long he will able to keep pace with them and the other top players looking to finish their season in London later this year?

-multi

Update: The nice thing about this is he certainly won't have to face anyone ranked/seeded higher than Tipsarevic until the Round of 16 at the earliest.  Last year of course he faced M. Youzhny in the round of 32, who was ranked #10 at the time, and eventually lost to 7th-ranked David Ferrer.  Based on his lack of seeding at the time (he had to win a three-setter in the final round of qualifying last year) he could very well have faced such highly ranked players in the earlier rounds.

On that note: As I was confirming the info for this update (and how to spell "Youzhny") at atpworldtour.com, just a bit below on the screen was a reminder of Milos' improvement over the past year that caught my eye.  I thought I should share it with you:

Aussie Open and Chennai - Milos Raonic - 2011

Milos failed to even qualify last year for the tournament that he won this year.  Of course, at the time Milos had not started his "meteoric" rise and had not started to post the results that would earn him "Newcomer of the Year", so those results weren't anything to write about...  He had to qualify for the ATP 250 tournament he played after the Australian Open last year in South Africa, but he obviously has not had to bother qualifying since - now he's the 23rd seed at the Australian Open.

--wacb