{"id":1087,"date":"2012-01-07T09:28:18","date_gmt":"2012-01-07T13:28:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/milosraonic.ca\/blog\/?p=1087"},"modified":"2012-01-07T22:44:17","modified_gmt":"2012-01-08T02:44:17","slug":"raonic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/milosraonic.ca\/blog\/2012\/01\/07\/raonic\/","title":{"rendered":"Raonic performs in straight sets versus 10th-ranked Almagro in Chennai, India Semi-Finals"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

First Set<\/h3>\n

The first break point came for 4th-seeded Milos at 2-2, but it went away with an overly ambitious forehand attempt by Milos and 2nd-seeded Almagro ended the game with a winner and an ace.\u00a0 The \"tall Canadian\", as the Indian announcers keep refering to him as, then held at love before earning 3 more break points on Almagro's next service game at 3-3.\u00a0 This time he did convert, following up with a hold ta love to make it 5-3.\u00a0 Almagro's next service game hit deuce a couple of times before he held to make it 5-4 before Raonic pounded through the Spaniard with some more amazing serves including one at 223 km\/h, the fastest in the match up to that point.\u00a0 Milos showed again that he can pull out his best performance when needed most.\u00a0 He succeeded in 92% of first serves and won 86% of those.\u00a0 He won 14 return points compared to Almagro's 4.\u00a0 He also hit 10 aces in the set compared to only 2 for Almagro - overall a very solid set from Raonic.<\/p>\n

\"1st

1st Set Stats - Raonic vs Almagro - 7 Jan 2012 (from atpworldtour.com)<\/p><\/div>\n

Second Set<\/h3>\n

Raonic came out with a bang again in the 2nd set, including wining his second service game at love to make it 2-2.\u00a0 The next two service games were comfortable holds as well, as Milos showed no signs of allowing Nico Almagro a chance to break him.\u00a0 At 4-4, Milos capitalized on a couple of errors by Almagro and blasted more laser-like forehands to get the first break of the second set and a chance to serve out the match.<\/p>\n

The next service game was a little shaky on serve, including mostly second serves and a ball toss that got away from him.\u00a0 On a few of those rallies Milos hit some errors to give Nico 2 break points (his first of the match).\u00a0 He blasted through the first with a lightening service ace and the second with an amazing backhand down the line.\u00a0 At deuce, he did hit a forehand down the line a little wide, but answered to bring it back to deuce with another 2 aces to give him adv and match point.\u00a0 With another unreturnable serve, he put away the second set and the match.<\/p>\n

Game, Set, & Match (stats)!<\/h3>\n

Milos more comfortable holding his service games throughout the entire match.\u00a0 I wouldn't go as far as to say that Milos dominated the match, but until the last game of the match, Almagro never had any chances to get ahead - it took only 1 hour and 11 minutes to put the match away 6-4, 6-4.<\/p>\n

The stats below show that Milos gave one of his best performances today, especially considering that it was against #10 in the world and his buddy, Nicolas Almagro.<\/p>\n

\"Match

Match Stats - Raonic vs Almagro - 7 Jan 2012 (from atpworldtour.com)<\/p><\/div>\n

Next Up... Janko Tipsarevic?<\/h3>\n

Milos Raonic's next opponent in the finals of the ATP 250 at Chennai, India is currently being decided on court.\u00a0 Tipsarevic is leading against Soeda 4-0 in the first set, and up 40-0 in the current game...\u00a0 So if it's not a final match tomorrow with Tipsarevic I'll be surprised.\u00a0 Either way, the final coverage from sportsnet<\/a>, online and on TV, will start at 6:30 AM again tomorrow, as it did today, to see if Milos can win his second ATP World Tour title!<\/p>\n

Multimedia<\/h3>\n

More to follow once posted by the official tournament website...<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/span><\/strong> Here's some of the media from the site.\u00a0 There is no official video posted yet, but I suspect there will be soon...\u00a0 Click on the photo thumbs to go to the full size pics on the tournament webpage at aircelchennaiopen.org<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \u00a0\"\"<\/a> \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The third image in the top row above is probably my favorite of any of the recent shots I've seen...<\/p>\n

--wacb<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First Set The first break point came for 4th-seeded Milos at 2-2, but it went away with an overly ambitious forehand attempt by Milos and 2nd-seeded Almagro ended the game with a winner and an ace.\u00a0 The “tall Canadian”, as the Indian announcers keep refering to him as, then held at love before earning 3 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/milosraonic.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/milosraonic.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/milosraonic.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/milosraonic.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/milosraonic.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1087"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/milosraonic.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1089,"href":"http:\/\/milosraonic.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions\/1089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/milosraonic.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/milosraonic.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/milosraonic.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}