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Milos Raonic vs. Gaël Monfils: an Australian Open quarter-final battle of contrasts
MELBOURNE, Australia – A horizontal lunge by French phenomenon Gaël Monfils was THE photo to come out of the Australian Open on Monday, a gravity-defying dive of the kind the 29-year-old from Paris makes regularly, the kind of move that comes upon you suddenly and is hard to even capture adequately.
Canadian Milos Raonic, his opponent in Wednesday night's quarter-final match, is his polar opposite on every single possible level.
Monfils's focus seems scattered most of the time. He's always injured. He changes coaches with the wind. He seems to prefer the spectacle of the tennis to the actual grunt work of winning. He's immature, insouciant, compelling, personable, fascinating and above all, the player most of his peers will tell you has the most pure talent in the game.
And then, there is Raonic: talented in his own way, but not a showman. Methodical by choice. Hard-working, driven, ambitious. More than four years younger than Monfils, he has arguably already had the better career, and he's barely getting started.
If they have anything in common, it's their willingness to experiment with various hair styles. And they're both very tall. But that's about it.
How will this clash, set for the middle of the night back home in the East (a more palatable 12:30 a.m. on the west coast) play out?
No way of knowing. There is little history between the two; Monfils leads their head-to-head 2-0, but they haven't played in two and a half years.
It could be a compelling study in contrasts. It could be a day Monfils doesn't show up, and Raonic rolls over him. It could be a day Monfils has a huge day. It could be a dogfight. It could end after a set when Monfils finally breaks a body part.
"From what I've seen so far of him, he's playing well. He's very entertaining and he's very difficult to play. He can give you complete ends of the spectrum within one game. So it's very much of an internal match for me. I just have to take the game to him, Raonic said. "I have to make him feel uncomfortable. Not let him get into his sort of playing comfort. If I can sort of keep up with the efficiency moving forward, I'll have definitely some opportunities."
Monfils was basically the invisible man through the days leading up to the tournament, absent for the most part from any of the practice-court schedules. He pulled out of the exhibition Hopman Cup the first week of the year, and hadn't even played an official match coming into the first Grand Slam of the season.
But he had a dream draw: a qualifier in the first round, a countryman far better known for his doubles prowess in the second round (Nicolas Mahut) and a fellow shotmaker – another qualifier, another Frenchman – in Stéphane Robert in the third round. Monfils got through all in straight sets and dropped just one set to another unseeded player, Andrey Kuznetsov, in the fourth round.
So his form is impossible to truly judge, since he has yet to be tested. His potential, everyone is aware of.
"Milos is in good form. Coming in with a win in Brisbane. As we know, a big serve. Actually I think also a little bit he improve a lot his movement, hitting big from the baseline, a good return. It's going to be interesting to see with what I going to come up with," Monfils said.
