Raonic rolls on at Rogers
Easy win over Jared Donaldson sets up quarter-final with Monfils
Day after day, player after player has streamed into the news conference room at the Rogers Cup and described the Aviva Centre’s centre court playing surface as “fast.”
In conditions like those, balls have more bounce and everybody’s serve moves up a tier. Average serves become tougher to hit, and a top-flight serve like Milos Raonic’s can become downright disarming to opponents.
Most players might deliver a handful of serves faster than 200 km/h each match, but with Raonic, the tournament’s fourth seed and biggest attraction, it’s simpler to count the serves that don’t crack that barrier.
Like the 185 km/h changeup he snuck past qualifier Jared Donaldson to end the first game of a match Raonic would win 6-2, 6-3.
Afterward Raonic said the dominant win helped ease his transition from the grass of Wimbledon, where he lost in the final, to hard courts, where he’ll contest the rest of the season.
“I was struggling a few days before this tournament, just because (you’re) not necessarily sure you can’t come in on the same kind of shots and finding that rhythm,” Raonic said.
“I was fortunate to start quite well yesterday, and it gave me some comfort leading into today.”
Raonic qualified for Friday’s quarterfinals, where he’ll meet France’s Gael Monfils.
But where Monfils spent more than two hours in the mid-afternoon defeating seventh-seeded David Goffin, Raonic dispatched Donaldson in 70 minutes.
Measured by serve rating, a metric that factors in first serve percentage, service points won, aces and double faults, Raonic is the tour’s third-most effective server.
According to the ATP’s website, Raonic has registered a 299.5 serve rating over the last 52 weeks.
Thursday night he scored 333, and tallied 15 aces against the 19-year-old Donaldson.
Donaldson’s second-round victory over unseeded Fabio Fognini couldn’t prepare him to tackle a player close to cracking the world’s top 5.
Especially not on a surface that amplifies Raonic’s already supercharged serve.
Raonic unleashed several serves that surpassed 230 km/h, including the ace that ended the match.
“Because I saw that he was going to return from close, I went a little bit harder into the body just to try to make him think about it,” Raonic said.
As Raonic addressed the media top seed Novak Djokovic was closing out his first set over Radek Stepanek. The world’s top-ranked player prevailed 6-2, 6-4, and will face Tomas Berdych in Friday’s quarter-final.
And Monfils, who entered this week with momentum after winning the Citi Open in Washington D.C. last weekend, was recovering ahead of Friday’s showdown with Raonic.
Monfils has now won eight straight matches, and told reporters he didn’t feel fatigued despite his long, physically-taxing win over Goffin.
While he ranks 19th worldwide in serve rating, Monfils says he’s still adjusting to a playing surface that will boost his service game.
“This week my percentage of serve is not that great,” said Monfils, who is currently 14th in the ATP rankings. “But we try to have more power and for sure accuracy. I feel with that way I have more power, so I keep going.”
Monfils has won twice in his career against Raonic, once in 2011 and again two years later. This season Raonic and Monfils have played twice — in the quarter-finals at both the Australian Open and Indian Wells.
Raonic took both those matches.