Milos Raonic’s first Grand Slam quarter-final comes, of all places, on the dirt

PARIS – The draw can be a fairly random thing, exceedingly generous to some and so stingy to others.

But for anyone not named Novak Djokovic or Rafael Nadal to make a big run in a major, the luck of the draw is a significant factor.

And so it was that Roger Federer played the dangerous Ernests Gulbis for the right to reach the French Open quarterfinals. And that No. 8 seed Milos Raonic drew Marcel Granollers of Spain.

Another thing that has to happen is that those players must make those opportunities pay off. And that's exactly what Raonic did in dismissing the unseeded Spaniard by a symmetrical score of 6-3, 6-3, 6-3 to advance to the final eight of a Grand Slam tournament for the first time in his career.

The result is a milestone, but to consider it a breakthrough is to discount the draw factor. Three years ago in Australia, a 20-year-old Raonic reached the fourth round and had a Spaniard to defeat to reach the quarterfinals.

The difference? In Australia, it was David Ferrer, not Granollers.

This Spaniard is an atypical one, with an almost homemade-looking game and a mission to come to the net as often as he can. He tried. He served and volleyed. He chipped and charged on returns. But he couldn't overcome the serve, and the rest of Raonic's game.

When the Canadian served for the match in the third set, most of his deliveries cracked the 220 km/hour barrier. And that's pretty tough to chip and charge the net on.

In the end, the difference for Raonic during a very successful clay-court season was in

sticking to his game, and not try so hard to make surface-specific adjustments that took away his basic weaponry. In other words, play his hard-court game on clay.

"Just more of an approach of knowing more balls will come back but trying to stay close, not going too far back (behind the court), and all these kind of things," Raonic said. "I was doing it on hard courts, and it's been working out well for me."

As well, Raonic has been making better, quicker adjustments to the changes in how the clay behaves depending on the weather. "I still prefer when it's warm, sunny, and moving quickly obviously. But whereas before I would definitely struggle depending on the weather, I feel like it's something I have just learned how to handle much better through experience," he said.

Next up for Raonic is someone he saw on the other side of the court just a few weeks ago in Rome, No. 2 seed Novak Djokovic.

Raonic gave himself a lot of looks at that match, ultimately falling in three tough sets. This one, though, will be best-of-five sets. And the way Djokovic stepped it up a level or two and destroyed No. 11 seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 6-1, 6-4, 6-1 Sunday, it's going to be a big challenge.