@Sportshorn
It didn’t start the way he planned it but Milos Raonic made up for the shaky start in the end. After dropping the first set, the fifth seed on the Men’s side defeated Rogerio Dutra Silva 4-6, 6-2, 6-3, 6-4 in the second round at the French Open finishing the match in style with four straight aces.
Dutra Silva broke early to start the match after Raonic made three of his 14 unforced errors in the set. He didn’t appear to be intimidated by his opponents big serve, breaking him for a second time and winning the opening set in 34 minutes.
However, from the second set onwards Raonic began to find his game settling in and playing much more consistent tennis. He had 63 winners in the match, 51 of those coming in the final three sets. One of the games biggest serves also started to heat up. He didn’t face a single break point in the second set and he fired 18 of his 25 aces in the final two.
“There’s some pluses to take out of it, some things I definitely want to do better,” said Raonic. “Obviously, I was very competitive. I felt a little bit sluggish to start. Sort of let him really into it, and you could see that he started believing after a while, and that’s always a dangerous state. And, you know, I managed to sort of weather the storm and hold it out throughout that match.”
The 6’5 Canadian mixed in a few approach shots winning 14 of the 17 points at the net when he did so. He also found ways to pick apart his Brazilian opponent. After five attempts he broke Dutra Silva to go up 4-2 on his way to winning the third set. Then after a nearly ten minute game and one tossed racquet, he finally converted on his seventh break chance in the ninth game of the fourth set before closing out the match. Credit to Dutra Silva, ranked No. 79 in the world but the experience and power from Raonic was too much to handle.
Raonic is now 21-6 on the year and is into the third round at Roland-Garros for the fifth straight time. He will take on Guillermo Garcia-Lopez on Friday.
