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

Raonic downs Petzschner in 4 sets

Milos Raonic defeated Philipp Petzschner in the second round of the Australian Open, 6-4 5-7 6-2 7-5. He advances to the third round where he will meet former US Open and Wimbledon champion Lleyton Hewitt (AUS).

The serving from Milos was consistent enough for most of the match to keep Petzschner from earning too many chances. However, there were several instances where Raonic fell behind to 0-40 seemingly out of nowhere. All it took was a few missed first serves and a couple of errors for Milos to find himself in a hole.

Raonic broke to start the match, backing it up by holding with relative ease. Petzschner picked up his serve as the set wore on, and there weren't many extended rallies. Interestingly, Petzschner was rocking compression socks for the match. That's not a look you see very often on the tour. Though they probably weren't a fashion statement, but an attempt to stave off muscle fatigue in the lower leg.

Serving for the opening set, Raonic showed some of the finer aspects of his game. He started with a nice passing shot to win the first point, then he hit a blistering inside-out forehand to take the next. Milos followed this up with an ace to take a 40-0 lead. After spraying a backhand shot wide, Raonic put the set away on a very nice cross court forehand winner.

Petzschner found himself with a 15-30 lead on Raonic's serve to start the second, but Milos ran off three straight points to level things at one game all. Despite a low first serve percentage, Petzschner was nearly perfect winning points off the first serve.

Just when it seemed like the set was heading to a tiebreak with Raonic serving at 4-5, Milos went down 0-40 after getting beaten by a lob and gifting Petzschner a few points. Right on cue, Raonic served his way out of trouble and eventually put the game away with an ace. In doing so, he saved 4 set points and kept his unbroken in 2012 streak alive. The errors made their unwelcome return when he was serving at 5-6, and Raonic was once again down 0-40. Raonic wasn't able to save all three set points this time and his unbroken streak in 2012 came to an end. The first serve percentage fell off a bit in the second set, and the ace count left something to be desired.

Not one to waste time, Raonic got his head back in the game and broke Petzschner to start the third. Raonic would earn further chances over the next few games, eventually securing the insurance break to take a 5-2 lead. Petzschner looked somewhat listless as Milos closed out the third set, as though he just came to the realization that the only way to break Raonic's serve was to wait for the Canadian to make a string of errors.

Petzschner continued to appear suspiciously aloof, almost philosophical, in the fourth set. I was expecting him to take off both of shoes and one of his socks at some point. I was immediately reminded of this:

But unlike the Baumer, Petzschner didn't go away and he was soon rewarded with another 0-40 lead on Raonic's serve. Milos made up for his previous loss of serve and put together 6 straight points to stay on even terms. Things wouldn't stay even for long, however, as Raonic was able to break Petzschner in the following game. Service breaks became the norm at this stage of the match and Raonic would get broken for a second time while serving for it at 5-4. But Milos broke back immediately, earning another chance to serve for the match. This time Raonic was able to close it out book his spot in the third round.

Thanks to TSN.ca for streaming the match live for all the Canadian tennis fans. It makes sense that they would show live hockey on TV while this match was going on, but they're showing an encore presentation of the match on TSN2 as I write this. It wasn't a picture perfect performance from Milos today, but he got the better of Petzschner in a tough match and now leads the head-to-head 2 to 1. More importantly, Raonic is through to the third round of the Australian Open for the second year in a row. Not bad.

Now we wait to see which former World No.1 player he will face in the next round: Hewitt or Roddick? And while we wait, why not watch this:

UPDATE: (23) Milos Raonic will face Lleyton Hewitt in the third round of the Australian Open after (15) Andy Roddick was forced to retire due to injury.

-multi