Tomorrow's Order of Play for the Rakuten
Japan Open is:
D Tursunov (RUS) vs [6] J Tipsarevic (SRB)
M Baghdatis (CYP) vs [2] A Murray (GBR)
[4] M Fish (USA) vs E Gulbis (LAT)
[WC] T Ito (JPN) vs B Tomic (AUS)
(provided by atpworldtour.com)
A couple of interesting matchups there; the
explosive Tursonov comes up against the in-form Tipsarevic, Baghdatis vs Murray
has been interesting in the past but I don't see Baghdatis bothering Murray
that much this time, and Fish vs Gulbis; a 'popcorn match' as Darren Cahill
would say i.e. it would be a great one to watch. They both play aggressive
tennis - Gulbis can take the aggression (and unpredictability) a bit too far -
and Fish is always a joy to watch anyway. I'm thinking straight sets to Fish,
maybe a challenging first set, but really... who can predict how Gulbis will
play, he goes from being sublime to shocking.
Anyway... my main topic for this blog post is
the day after's match of Nadal vs Raonic. This was actually a matchup I was
hoping to see in the early rounds of Wimbledon but Raonic unfortunately had to
retire with a hip injury at an earlier stage in the tournament against Gilles
Muller. Raonic had a close match yesterday against Yuichi Sugita (ultimately winning 6-7(4) 6-3 7-6(1)) and this could mean he may suffer from fatigue but I imagine he will have recovered as he will have had a day with no match to play prior to facing Nadal. Nadal on the other hand had a straight forward two set win.
Nadal and Raonic have only met once in the
past and incidentally it was at the same tournament last year. Nadal ultimately
prevailed 6-4 6-4 but this was before Raonic made his name and ascended by
clinching his first tournament earlier this year at the SAP open.
What interests me about this matchup is that
Raonic is a big and very physical character who has big groundstrokes and a
huge serve which I’m sure you’ve all heard about. These are the types of
opponent who would give anyone a hard time, but in particular Nadal. The types
of players who can beat Nadal are the crafty angle abusers like Nalbandian and
Davydenko and big guys who just outpower and hit through his high bouncing
balls like Del Potro and Soderling, (and of course Novak Djokovic who just
‘outmoves’ him and matches him for consistency, but who else could possibly do
that?). Milos Raonic clearly fits into the Del Potro/Soderling category.
What is questionable is Raonic’s fitness and
motility, which clearly could improve, and I’m sure it will. But in the
immediate future (i.e in less than 2 days) this could be a problem. If Raonic
fails to take the upper hand in the rally early, Nadal will pretty much
outmaneuver him and ultimately win the rally. To beat Nadal, Raonic needs to
play aggressively but with consistency. This may sound like an oxymoron but
this is what Federer has been doing for the past 7 years. By this I mean he
needs to measure his shots and try and take Nadal’s time away and keep him
moving, while he himself moves up the court. His serve will help him in his own
service games and it also opens up another option; serving and volleying which
would be helpful to incorporate into his service games. Some may say he should
do this on the majority of his points but I disagree. We all know about Nadal’s
potency on his return of serve and also of his anticipation. Serve and volley
could be mixed in to his service games to keep Nadal on his toes and with a
serve like Raonic’s there will be a decent number of easy volleys to put away. The key for Raonic in this match is to have a high first serve percentage.
