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

Monte Carlo – Masters 1000

Update, April 20th

Monte Carlo finals just weren't meant to be for RaoTom-ic. They lost 6-3, 6-3 to the Bryans this afternoon...

Update, April 19th

Raonic/Tomic will take on Bryan/Bryan tomorrow in the Semi-Finals of the Monte Carlo Rolex Masters. They are scheduled to be the final match on Court Central, directly following the Djokovic v. Fognini singles semi, which will start not before 3pm local time. I estimate that we'll get to watch the Milos starting around 11am (no sooner), but maybe as late as 12h00, noon, Eastern Time (EDT). Thanks to the schedulers for making their match timing North American lazy-weekend-day friendly!
I wouldn't mind seeing Milos have another shot at a doubles final, the first one in Halle with Robin Haase was exciting, though they didn't get away with the title. I'll definitely be watching the singles final on Sunday if it's Murray v. Djoko, a Milos match would do well to top it off...
In other news, Sportsnet.ca will be streaming the CAN v UKR Fed Cup matches from Kiev. This starts streaming online at 6am Easter (EDT) tomorrow. It will be accessible at:

http://www.sportsnet.ca/sportsnet-live/

Enjoy!

Update, April 18th, again.....

RaoTomic will play the winner of the Bryan/Bryan vs. Melzer/Paes match, which is last up on "Court des Prince" tomorrow, Friday, April 19th. As per the last update, Tomic and Raonic have made the doubles semi-finals in this, their first clay-court tourney of the year (though they both came up short in singles). Monte Carlo 2013 may yet hold some glory for these youngsters, considered among the top future players on the ATP tour.

Update, April 18th

So, Milos Raonic and Bernard Tomic defeated Daniel Nestor and Robert Lindstedt in doubles today in Monte Carlo. It was a straight-sets victory, though a tiebreak was required in the first set.
This was the first tourney for the new partnership between Nestor and Lindstedt, I'm not sure what led to the demise, but I'm hoping it's not any nagging health concerns of Nestor's, we need him healthy for Davis Cup in Serbia in September!
It wasn't on TV, but if anyone knows of any news/comment about the match, please leave a comment!

Update, April 17th

Milos lost his 2nd round match today versus Jarko Niemenin. He went down in a 3rd set tie-break, after what seemed to be too many unforced errors racked up. He was able to keep his own 1st serve stats up but he wasn't able to return well enough, except for periods in the 2nd set, to mount a big challenge on the Nieminen serve. In the 3rd set he won 25% and 36% of 1st and 2nd return points, respectively, to Nieminen's 17% and 67%.

I watched parts of the 3rd set and I must say he didn't seem focused, or sharp. It was not pretty to see Milos play at a lower level than he usually does! He didn't seem like his head was in it for some reason. The unforced errors caught up to him the tiebreak, and Nieminen took the win.

In other news, looks like Youzhny was up 5-1 in 1st set vs Djokovic, but now back to 5-4 as Youzhny continues to try to serve it out!

Update, April 16th

Milos Raonic & Bernard Tomic won their first-round doubles match against Cilic & Melo, 6-4, 7-6(3), 11-9. Milos vs. Nieminen is tomorrow, Wednesday, April 17th, 10:30am local time in Monte Carlo [1:30am PDT 4:30 EDT]

Update, April 15th

Original Post, April 14th

Milos is up 3rd on Court Central tomorrow, 15 Apr. The matches start at 10:30am local time in Monaco (4:30am Eastern (EDT)), so he'll probably be on around 9:30am...

He's up against Julien Benneteau of France, who has recently lost in the first round of Miami and Indian Wells and then lost his doubles match alongside Lldora during France's recent loss to Argentina in the Davis Cup quarterfinals. He did not play singles in last weekend's Davis Cup tie. Benneteau has only won one singles match since making the final in Rotterdam in mid-Feb, so there's no question he's in a slump and that he'll be hungry to bounce back after such disappointing results for the last 2 months.

In terms of head-to-head, Raonic and Benneteau have won a game each in their two meetings. Milos won their most recent meeting three sets to love, during last year's Davis Cup meeting between Canada and France (Canada's only win of that tie). Benneteau beat Raonic in Paris in 2011; a close match, Benneteau won the third set 6-4 after they'd each won a set by tie-break.

By the way, here's how I think the tournament will go : )

ATP World Tour Fantasy Draw: http://goo.gl/Ge7YE

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