Raonic rallies to oust hometown favourite
INDIAN WELLS, CALIF. Canada’s Milos Raonic is heading to the round of 16 at the BNP Paribas Open after a come-from-behind victory on Monday.
The No. 14 seed downed American qualifier Marcos Giron 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 in a third-round match, continuing an impressive run of success for Canadians at the event.
Three Canadians remain alive in singles at the men’s and women’s tourney after Felix Auger-aliassime, 18, of Montreal, fell to Yoshihito Nishioka of Japan 6-7 (2), 6-4, 7-6 (5) in a third-round match.
Auger-aliassime was down 5-1 in the third set before forcing a deciding tiebreaker.
Denis Shapovalov, a 19-year-old from Richmond Hill, Ont., and 18-year-old Bianca Andreescu of Mississauga, Ont., had Monday off after winning matches on Sunday.
The 24th-seeded Shapovalov will face No. 10 seed Marin Cilic of Croatia in a third-round match on Tuesday, while Andreescu will square off with No. 18 seed Qiang Wang of China in a fourth-round match on the women’s side.
Raonic’s win was the seventh in a row for Canadians in singles at the event.
After fighting back from a firstset loss, Raonic found himself down a break at 3-0 against the 217th-ranked Giron in the third set. But the 28-year-old from Thornhill, Ont., recorded two breaks to take a 5-4 lead before serving out the match.
Giron, an NCAA singles champion in 2014 while attending nearby UCLA, had the support of most of the fans at the facility’s main stadium as he flirted with a major upset.
Prior to this week, the 25-yearold Giron had won just one tour-level match in four maindraw attempts. The Californian’s career was slowed by a hip injury in 2015, requiring surgery. Raonic had a 55-23 edge in winners, but made 14 more unforced errors than the American (31-17).
Ottawa’s Gabriela Dabrowski also remains alive in the doubles draw. The fifth-seeded team of Dabrowski and Yifan Xu of China will face Darija Jurak of Croatia and Raluca Olaru of Romania in the quarter-finals.