{"id":1755,"date":"2012-05-08T11:44:36","date_gmt":"2012-05-08T14:44:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/milosraonic.ca\/blog\/?p=1755"},"modified":"2012-05-08T17:09:46","modified_gmt":"2012-05-08T20:09:46","slug":"raonic-to-face-federer-in-madrid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/milosraonic.ca\/blog\/2012\/05\/08\/raonic-to-face-federer-in-madrid\/","title":{"rendered":"Raonic to face Federer in Madrid"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Milos Raonic defeated David Nalbandian in straight sets at the Mutua Madrid Open<\/a>, 6-4\u00a0 6-4. Raonic will meet Roger Federer [3] in the second round.<\/h5>\n

You couldn't have asked for a better start to the match from Milos. Nalbandian wasn't serving particularly well and Raonic jumped on the opportunity to secure the early break. He was being aggressive with the forehand and it was paying off immediately. Milos backed it up by hitting a few aces and holding serve comfortably. From there it was business as usual as Raonic continued to serve well and didn't give Nalbandian any chance to get back on serve. The bombs down the T-line and the kick serve out wide were on full display today.<\/p>\n

Nalbandian began to show some frustration in the second set, bouncing his racquet off the court after chunking a shot into the net. While Raonic was holding easily, Nalbandian had to work for his service games. Raonic earned the first break point of the second set with Nalbandian serving at 3-3, but squandered it by hitting a ball long. Milos wouldn't have to wait long for another chance however, earning another break point against Nalbandian in his next service game. This time, Nalbandian would gift it away on a double fault giving Raonic the 5-4 lead and the chance to serve for the match. There was no double fault when serving for it at 40-0 this time: Raonic put the match away with an ace and a love service game.<\/p>\n

Playing at altitude in dry conditions certainly helped Milos hit through the court and run up the ace count. Nadal was right<\/a> about the smurf clay courts being quicker and rewarding the big servers. The total ace count was 16, which is quite impressive for two sets on clay. What's more is that he didn't drop a single point when he landed his first serve in. Even though he was facing a great player in Nalbandian, this looked like a typical Raonic victory. He gave up no break point chances, and he was patient enough to wait for his opportunities to be aggressive. Raonic's serve was just impenetrable.<\/p>\n

And his reward for a solid performance against a tough first round opponent? Raonic will have another crack at Roger Federer.<\/strong> Milos was able to take a set from Federer in a tiebreak at Indian Wells earlier this year, but ultimately lost the match. All these recent clay court wins over big players (Murray, Almagro, and Nalbandian) should give Raonic a tremendous amount of confidence heading into the match against Federer.<\/p>\n

This will be a match to watch, folks. But you already knew that. One blogger is even predicting that Milos will win<\/a>. It is certainly true that Federer hasn't played in a while and that he might be a little rusty starting out on the blue clay, and Raonic currently has all the smurf-claymentum on his side. It's kind of ironic considering how tall Milos is.<\/p>\n

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

Milos Raonic defeated David Nalbandian in straight sets at the Mutua Madrid Open, 6-4\u00a0 6-4. Raonic will meet Roger Federer [3] in the second round. You couldn’t have asked for a better start to the match from Milos. Nalbandian wasn’t serving particularly well and Raonic jumped on the opportunity to secure the early break. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"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\/1755"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/milosraonic.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1755"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/milosraonic.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1758,"href":"http:\/\/milosraonic.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1755\/revisions\/1758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/milosraonic.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/milosraonic.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/milosraonic.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}