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Milos Raonic will need a hip check after his win Friday in Paris, but he's through to the round of 16
PARIS – The third-round match against a lucky loser was proceeding relatively without incident, unless you consider the fact that Andrej Martin somehow managed to break Milos Raonic’s serve twice in the space of the first set.
The 25-year-old Canadian still won it in a tiebreak, with the help of back-to-back double-faults by his Slovak opponent, just a year older. But it was after Raonic broke serve to start the third set, winced in pain and immediately went to sit down when there was no official changeover, that things got real.
Raonic overcame the hip issue that required a medical timeout and took care of Martin 7-6 (4), 6-2, 6-3 to move into the fourth round at the French Open. It was a match that took two hours and 40 minutes and didn’t otherwise take a lot of him.
But the hip … it was the left hip, not the side where the adductor that has given him problems this season is located and where he had surgery nearly five years ago after a nasty spill on the grass at Wimbledon.
“At one point it sort of felt like I had trouble bringing my hip back around when I would sprint forward when my left leg was behind me. And then it sort of went the other way. I think the muscles around it to protect sort of seized up,” Raonic said after the win. “The trainer was able to sort of assure me that from what he could tell there was nothing serious there and that I'll have tests done on it now, and take it from there.”
Raonic said that after the treatment from the physio to lose it up, he felt better and better as the match went on, as the muscles around the area relaxed a bit.
“I felt it towards the middle of the second set, and I was just sort of seeing how it goes. When I asked for the timeout, it just got really painful at that one point,” Raonic said. “That's why I asked for the timeout, to have it looked over and have it sort of observed as much as it can be, considering the limited resources you have there.”
The trainer pulled out a mat and gave the area a restaurant-quality massage, and Raonic didn’t seem too hobbled when play resumed.
He did gift back that early break of serve with a double-fault – only fair since Martin gifted the original break to him with two double faults. And he did get slightly annoyed on a few occasions when he wasn’t able to take advantage of opportunities to finish it more quickly.
“I tried to focus on what I could. I wish I served better today. That obviously would have made my life a lot easier. I was quite efficient on the return games. I dealt with what I had and I fought as hard as I could, and I was able to move on,” he said.
Raonic looked particularly happy after this one, generally, in recent years, there haven't been huge smiles or a lot of emotion after what now is a relatively early-round victory for him. To not have had it prolonged beyond the minimum, and to give himself a couple of days to have the hip treated before having to play again, might have been behind the big smile.
Raonic didn’t have to change his tactics much to compensate for a lack of movement, and he never pulled up on the left leg at any time.
The speed on his serve didn’t drop much, either, even if he wasn’t happy with his overall serving effort.
It helped that Martin, a relative journeyman whose ranking has never reached the top 100 and who did well to qualify and make the third round here, never displayed much belief that he had a chance.
He had a good shot at the first set, coming back twice from service breaks. And though Raonic stormed out to a 4-0 lead in the second set before he began feeling the hip, there was an opening.
The Slovak, who was one of the first players to meet Raonic at the Grand Slam level when they played in the final round of qualifying at the 2011 Australian Open, almost seemed resigned to his fate after the first set.
Next up for Raonic in the round-of-16 is Spain’s Albert Ramos-Viñolas.
Ramos-Viñolas, a 28-year-old left-hander ranked No. 55, won a marathon five-setter over No. 23 seed Jack Sock of the U.S. Friday. Surprisingly, it’s the first time he has managed to get out of the second round in Paris – ever. Prior to this, the Spaniard had won just one main-draw match (back in 2011) at Roland Garros in his entire career – and just four sets, total.
The two have met just once. Raonic prevailed in four sets on a hard court when the lefty was called upon for Davis Cup duty for Spain in 2013; the once-powerhouse country found all of its top players taking a pass on the tie against Canada in Vancouver, and the nation that produced Nadal, Ferrer, Verdasco, Lopez et al ended up being represented by … Ramos-Viñolas.
