Raonic still going strong
Canadian advances to 4th round after opponent withdraws due to injury
PARIS — Canadian Milos Raonic caught a break Friday at the French Open as he needed less than a half hour to complete a third-round victory over Spain’s Guillermo Garcia-Lopez.
Raonic, the No. 5 seed from Thornhill, Ont., advanced when Garcia-Lopez retired from the match due to a left thigh injury. The Canadian, who was leading 6-1, 1-0 at the time, said he can use the extra rest.
“I’ll take it when I can have it,” Raonic said. “I’ve played a lot over the last weeks. I’m playing well. I’m happy with the way I was able to start today. I think I’ve made good progress and I’m getting better and better each match.
“Now I’m just looking forward to playing in two days.”
Garcia-Lopez needed treatment at the end of the first set. Raonic had a 12-2 edge in winners and recorded five aces over the 28-minute contest.
Next up for the Canadian is a fourth-round match against 20th-seeded Pablo Carreno Busta of Spain, a 7-5, 6-3, 6-4 winner over Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov.
“I watched a bit of his match today, he’s playing well,” Raonic said. “He’s improved a lot over the last 16 months or so. I played him a few times toward the end of last year. He’s very solid, he’s disciplined, he shows up and he’s there and he doesn’t exit the match, you really have to beat him.
“You have to take it to him. So it’s going to be about trying to get control and trying to hold on to it throughout the match.”
Raonic did not drop a set in their three previous head-to-head meetings. He won on grass at Wimbledon last year and beat him twice on hardcourts later in the season.
Raonic is making his sixth career appearance at Roland Garros. His best result came in 2014 when he reached the quarter-finals.
Meanwhile, Novak Djokovic had an allaround difficult day at the French Open — from a tiff with the chair umpire to the big deficit he created and then needed to overcome in a steady rain.
Rafael Nadal’s journey to the fourth round, in contrast, could hardly have been easier. Indeed, his 100th best-of-five-set match on clay was also the most lopsided.
The stark numbers on the scoreboards at Court Philippe Chatrier revealed plenty about how differently things went in the back-to-back contests Friday for defending champion Djokovic and nine-time champion Nadal.
First up in the main stadium at Roland Garros was Nadal, who won 82 points and conceded merely 36 in a 6-0, 6-1, 6-0 victory over 63rd-ranked Nikoloz Basilashvili.
Djokovic followed in the main stadium and found himself in quite a bit of trouble right away against 41st-ranked Diego Schwartzman before emerging to win 5-7, 6-3, 3-6, 6-1, 6-1.
While it took Basilashvili 12 games and 49 minutes just to claim a single game — which spectators greeted with a roar as he stood motionless and straight-faced — Schwartzman not only took the second game of his match against Djokovic, he grabbed the opening set, too. And then the third, to go up by two sets to one.
The No. 2-seeded Djokovic’s biggest problem was himself. He wound up with 55 unforced errors to 43 winners under the watchful eye of new coach Andre Agassi.