@SportsHorn
It’s a place where Milos Raonic has had the most Grand Slam success in his career. A year ago he defeated Roger Federer in an exciting five setter on Centre Court in the semi-finals before losing to crowd favourite Andy Murray in his first career Grand Slam Final.
Raonic returned to the All England Club for the first time since last years success and got past German Jan-Lenard Struff 7-6, 6-2, 7-6 in their first round match which lasted two hours and 16 minutes.
The first set was back and forth without any service breaks although Raonic did have some chances. The World No.6 was able to secure the opening set winning the tiebreak seven points to five.
In the second, Raonic broke Struff twice in the first three games and built up a 4-love lead. Stuff was unable to get back in the set and Raonic finished it off easily.
The third set wasn’t as easy. Raonic made a few errors allowing Struff to stay in the match. The 26-year old Canadian had a chance to serve out the match up 5-4 but was broken to bring the set back to an even playing field. Raonic, who had been struggling of late winning just one of his last nine tiebreaks coming into the match, played a smart tiebreak this time around and closed out the contest after a Struff backhand error went long.
” I did a lot of good things today,” said Raonic, “especially from I think the attitude side. I was out there. I was pretty imposing. I did those things well, which are important, especially across two weeks here hopefully.”
Raonic finished with 20 aces in the match and won 78 percent of his first serve points. That along with 55 winners and 30 errors and his net play, which he really started to work on last year, was strong on Tuesday as well. He won 26 of the 39 points he played there. It was a decent result considering he had played just one grass court match this year before Wimbledon.
“Spent a lot more time training. Sort of got to the point where I was spending a lot of days practicing,” said the 6th seed. “I was just getting more and more eager for this tournament to start because there were a lot of days in a row.”
Next up for Raonic will be veteran Mikhail Youzhny who won his first round match in straight sets as well.”
“I’ve played him a bunch of times. Lost to him the last time we played,” Raonic said.” I have to be very disciplined with myself. Even that match I lost to him, I had a few match points. I think I was up a set, 5-1 in the tiebreak, even 6-1 in the tiebreak in the second set. Internal discipline for myself to be able to impose and dictate with my game is going to be the most important thing for me.”
