@SportsHorn
It wasn’t great but it got the job done. That would describe Milos Raonic’s second round victory over Mikhail Youzhny. Raonic got off to a shaky start but managed to get past the veteran Russian 3-6, 7-6, 6-4, 6-3 on Court 2.
Raonic, a finalist at Wimbledon a year ago, started slowly in the match getting broken at Love in his first service game and he made several routine mistakes early on. The 26 year old had two chances to break back in the seventh game but was unable to do so. Youzhny had just four winners and seven errors in the set but still managed to win it.
In the second set both players held serve throughout. In the tiebreak Raonic appeared frustrated at times even tempted to throw down his racquet in disgust. Youzhny, up 6-4, had two chances to go up two sets to none but a forehand down the line along with a big serve by the No. 6 seed thwarted the opportunities. Youzhny then hit a forehand wide and Raonic had another big serve and the set was his to even up the match.
In the third Youzhny double faulted away the first game giving the Canadian an early break. It turned out to be the only break of the set as Raonic continued to play well. His 37 winners were 24 more than his opponent and he lost just five of his 25 approaches at the net and went up two sets to one.
In the fourth set, Raonic showed more frustration but both players held serve until the 11th game . Youzhny, who had a break chance a game earlier, played an extremely sloppy service game and was broken at Love to go down 6-5. Raonic finished off his opponent shortly thereafter closing out the match with his 27th ace.
The No 7 ranked player in the world got some revenge for a loss to Youzhny last year in St. Petersburg and now holds a 3-1 career head to head record against him.
Raonic moved on to the third round for the fourth straight year at the All England Club. He finished with 58 winners in the match, Youzhny had just 17. He also lost just eight points on his first serve. His 32 errors and seven double faults will need to be cleaned up if he hopes to go deeper into the tournament. Next up for Raonic in the third round is Albert Ramos-Violas. The Spaniard needed a tough five sets to get past 19 year old Andrey Rublev.
