Indian Wells Day 6: Federer vs. Raonic Preview

There are quite a few popcorn matches today - like Del Potro vs. Verdasco which is going on right now - but I thought today I'd do a preview to probably the most anticipated match of the day; Federer vs. Raonic. It already promises to be a brilliant match but the fact that these two have never played each other before makes it even more exciting.

We've all heard about the danger that Raonic provides for anyone he plays against, mostly because of his missile of a serve but also his follow up - his powerful groundstrokes and his potent net game. All in all he plays really good aggressive tennis and breaking his serve could prove quite difficult.

However, Federer has not had much difficulty with players of this type in the past. We have seen him completely dominate Roddick time after time - Federer seems to like the ball coming onto him. What he doesn't like are the more defensive players like Simon or Murray (in the past) and of course Nadal - but there's a lot more to Nadal's game than just defence.

Having said this, I don't think this match will be as straight forward as a standard Federer-Roddick match in the past. Raonic will certainly be difficult to break for obvious reasons and it is this factor that will make this match interesting. I think we'll see a very close first set - maybe a tie break - but in the end I feel Federer will squeeze through it. This match could go three sets but if I had to bet I'd say Federer in straights as he's on a good run right now, having played brilliantly towards the conclusion of Dubai.

Rakuten Japan Open: Nadal vs Raonic

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.