Raonic ousted at Rogers Cup by 6-foot-11 Ivo Karlovic's 22 aces

MONTREAL – This year's hopes for a great Canadian story at the Rogers Cup were dashed twice, concurrently, on stadium courts in Montreal and Toronto Tuesday night as top stars Genie Bouchard and Milos Raonic both were eliminated.

In Bouchard's case, the result was probably not a shocker given her form in 2015. But for Raonic, whose consistency the last three years has been the most underrated thing about his rise to the top of the men's game, the 7-6 (1), 7-6 (1) defeat at the hands of 36-year-old Ivo Karlovic of Croatia was somewhat more surprising, and surely more disappointing.

But in the end, the lack of matches the last few months as the 24-year-old from Thornhill, Ont. dealt with a foot injury, combined with arguably the worst possible opponent he could have faced under the circumstances, resulted in an early exit.

The incidental physical consequences in the wake of his April foot surgery have been nearly as much of a concern than the actual foot itself. The 24-year-old Canadian has found himself with a variety of other physical aches and pains, caused by the compensation for the weaker area (the foot) as he uses his muscles in an unfamiliar fashion.

At Wimbledon, it was several body parts ending with his shoulder, because he was trying to serve even harder than usual to try to quicken the points. In Montreal Tuesday night, it was the back.

Here he is talking about it.

In Karlovic, he faced a player whose serve is an even bigger part of his game than it is for Raonic, his bread-and-butter as, despite his advanced tennis age, he's playing as well as ever. It made for a rather dull contest, as battles between big servers tend to be. But of most concern to Raonic was the fact that in this kind of matchup, it all comes down to a few points, those few opportunities when you have an opportunity to make something happen – usually in tiebreaks, as was the case Tuesday night.

Those opportunities are fewer than they might be against a standard player, and the difference between winning and losing a match usually comes down those points. Having a lot of match play, a comfort level in terms of playing those points, is the key to that. That's what Raonic is missing, and it showed.

Any other opponent, he would have had more looks on serve, more opportunities to make a shot when he needed to, and fewer consequences when he couldn't make them.

Raonic isn't often out-aced, but that was the case this time, by a 22-to-12 margin. The opening ace in the seventh game of the second set was the 10,000th of Karlovic's bombastic career.

What the Canadian did do well was fight off some break points in impressive fashion – four in the 4-4 game in the first set alone. Down 3-4 in the second set and serving to stay in the match, he saved three more break points and won five straight points to even the score and give himself a chance. At 4-5, serving to stay in the match, he saved three match points – on the third, he cranked a 233 km/hour ace.

In all, Raonic was 10-for-10 in saving break points. A bigger problem was that he was 0-for-0 in break-point opportunities on Karlovic's serve.

To Karlovic's credit, he played a pair of tremendous tiebreaks, with his forehand returns on deliveries from Raonic that amped up to 228 km/hour particularly impressive. And for him, it was a fairly rare top-10 victory – typically stolid, the Croat went over to give his support team big hugs after the victory.

And so now, at least in singles, the hopes all lie with Vasek Pospisil. That also feels like Wimbledon, just a little bit.