TENNIS WIMBLEDON 2014 – The last men’s quarterfinal matchup featured two of the ATP youngest and soon to be hottest stars, Milos Raonic verses wild card entrant Nick Kyrgios. Raonic, 23 years old, has showed over the past year and a half that he is ready and able to break into the top 10. Meanwhile, Kyrgios not yet 20, has chosen this year’s Wimbledon as his full coming out party as he took out Gasquet and world’s number one Nadal in order to earn his place in the quarterfinal. Cordell Hackshaw
Results, Order of Play, Draws and Interviews from The Championships
The last men’s quarterfinal matchup featured two of the ATP youngest and soon to be hottest stars, Milos Raonic verses wild card entrant Nick Kyrgios. Raonic, 23 years old, has showed over the past year and a half that he is ready and able to break into the top 10. Meanwhile, Kyrgios not yet 20, has chosen this year’s Wimbledon as his full coming out party as he took out Richard Gasqet (13) and world’s number one Rafael Nadal (2) in order to earn his place in the quarterfinal. Incidentally, these two meet several weeks ago in the 1st round of the French Open. Raonic won and this time around would be no different as he took the match 46-7 6-2 6-4 7-64. With this win, Raonic moves into his first of what he hopes would be many major semifinals appearances.
These two players looked to be evenly matched as they were both big guys and big servers. Neither was able to break the other despite great effort to do so in the 1st set. Thus it was no surprise that it ended up in a tiebreaker. Kyrgios appeared the steadier of the two as he was able to earn the minibreak at 5-4 and produced two big serves to take it 7-64. Raonic was not going to be deflated by this turn of event after all in his 4th round match, he rallied from a set down against Kei Nishikori. Raonic may have had trouble reading the Kyrgios’ serve in the 1st set but he had the full scope of it in the 2nd set. The Canadian broke Kyrgios in the 5th and 7th games and served out the set 6-2 to level the match.
Kyrgios fought back to earn his first break of the Raonic serve as he lead 2-0 in the 3rd set. This would be the lone break point chance he would see in the entire match. However, Raonic came back roaring to take the next four games for 4-2 lead. He would maintain this lead to take the set 6-4 and establish a 2-1 sets lead. Kyrgios for his part appeared to be committed fully in this match. He held serve in the 4th set but he was unable to get a good read on Raonic’s serve to earn another break chance. “He served unbelievable … [I]t looked like he was in such a rhythm that I just couldn’t do anything out there,” Kyrgios later stated. Therefore, the 4th set ended up in another tiebreaker. It was here that Raonic really showed his true strength and newfound belief in himself. He raced out to a 6-1 lead in the breaker and although Kyrgios saved three match points, Raonic would unleashed his 39th ace to take it 6-7 6-2 6-4 7-6 in 2 hours and 24 minutes.
In his press conference, Kyrgios said “I thought I played a strong first set today. I just couldn’t maintain that level. What he brought today was something special.” He mentioned that the grueling match against Nadal the day before took its toll on him physically and how after the 1st set, he began to hurt particularly in the 2nd set. Against most players, Kyrgios’ match stats would have been good enough to win a major match. He had 15 aces and 1 double fault to go with 34 winners and 22 errors. He won 67% of his 1st serve points and 54% on his 2nd serve. However, he was playing Raonic whose numbers were even more impressive. Raonic had 39 aces and 2 double faults added to his 73 winners and 25 errors. He got 70% of his 1st serves in, winning a staggering 88% of those points. His usually dismal 2nd serve percentage was greatly improved in this match to 67%.
Raonic will play Roger Federer (4) for a place in the final. Raonic spoke about the fact that he is 0-4 lifetime against Federer, “I haven’t played him I think in more than a year, a year and a bit, so I think I’m a different player. I’ve got in close with him in the past and I’ve found a lot of those things I can sort of pull away that give me a lot of belief that I can do this. It will be a match of great interest for sure; one of the sport’s greatest statesmen in history against one of its potentially future greats. So there’s no point to talk about it. I’ve got to step up and do it.”