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

Milos into semi-finals in Memphis

Milos Raonic defeats Olivier Rochus to advance to the semi-finals of the Regions Morgan Keegan Championships in Memphis for a second straight year.

Update: Milos will play Becker in the semi-final, starting at 4 PM, and Jurgen Melzer awaits him in the final if he's successful.

Catch Milos #Raonic in the Regions Morgan Keegan Championships semifinals, live on Sportsnet ONE at 4 p.m. ET. today

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) February 25, 2012

Milos played well for most of the first set, and only needed one break to put it away. His service games were not as much of a blowout as most might have expected against Olivier Rochus in the set, but still, the closest we got got to a break was a deuce point, which Milos put away with a couple of monster serves.

The set was characterized by the power of Raonic keeping Rochus running around the baseline almost continuously. Though Rochus did very well to defend and stretch for those inside-out forehands, he didn't earn any of those critical break points that Raonic so rarely provides opportunities for. As far as I could tell, Milos was taking it easy during the match, and as far as I could tell, he hadn't broken a sweat.

Both players started with holds again in the second set, with Milos having a little of an easier time. In the fifth game though, Milos earned a double break point and, on an error by Rochus, he converted the first one to take the lead in the second set.

With Rochus serving at 3-5, it looked as if Raonic wanted to let the game go and just serve for the match in the following game...

In the next game, though, Raonic started with forehand pushed wide, a very unforced error. He then hit another unforced error on the forehand down the line. Rochus then made an awesome return on a blistering serve, followed by a wicked get to put it down the line. He picked the corner on the next point to earn the break back. For the second straight game, Milos was looking much different than what we're accustomed to seeing in the past 2 weeks.

In the following game, Rochus' level was obviously elevated, but Milos started to step it back up as well with a great forehand down the line. Rochus did hang on to hold though, and Milos had to serve to send the set to a tiebreak.

He started this endeavour by winning a couple of points after having to make second serves, then an ace at 145 mph to make it 40-0 and a second straight ace to get a tiebreak.

The tiebreak began with an unreturnable serve by Rochus. He then put a backhand slice return wide and suffered an ace to serve down 1-2. He then threw a ball into the net on a bad error where it looked like he tried to take it too soon. A winner by Milos earned him a 4-1 lead, though Rochus came back with some precise, powerful hits to get one of the mini-breaks back.

Milos served an ace to protect his 1 mini-break lead, then won another break on the next point, but missed the first match point. He finished in style with his 26th ace on a second serve in the next point though.

Milos will face the winner of the match that's already underway between Ben Becker and Lukasz Kubot.  I must say that I like Milos' chances against either in the semis.  If he were to advance to the final, his potential opponents are Radek Stepanek and Jurgen Melzer, who will contest their semi-final tomorrow starting at noon Eastern (11 AM local).  Milos' semi-final will start at 3 PM local time, which will be 4 PM Eastern.

Sportsnet ONE will have coverage starting at 1 PM EST tomorrow for the semi-finals, so Milos' semi-final match win Benjamin Becker at 4 PM EST should be airing live.

Unfortunately, I don't see any indication of live streaming online anymore from Sportsnet.  This is a real bummer.

--wacb