It will literally be a must-win situation for one man–and virtually for both–when Andy Murray and Milos Raonic take the London court on Tuesday. Murray lost to Kei Nishikori in his opener, while Raonic went down to Roger Federer.
Andy Murray will have to get back on track in a hurry at the World Tour Finals if he wants to have a chance of reaching the semifinals. The sixth-ranked Scot has home-court advantage of sorts in London, but it hardly mattered in a 6-4, 6-4 opening loss to Kei Nishikori on Sunday. Murray now has a tough test on his hands against Milos Raonic on Tuesday night.
Raonic has been a problem for Murray in the past. The 23-year-old Canadian leads the head-to-head series 3-1, including 2-1 on hard courts and 1-0 this season. He has won two in a row after prevailing 6-3, 6-7(5), 7-6(4) at the 2012 Tokyo event and 4-6, 7-5, 6-3 this spring in Indian Wells. Murray’s lone victory came via a 6-4, 6-4, 6-2 decision in round four of the U.S. Open two years ago.
This week also got off to a slow start for Raonic, who succumbed to Roger Federer 6-1, 7-6(0) on Monday night. Unlike Murray, however, the world No. 8 steadily improved as the match progressed. Raonic generated four break points in the second set–including one set point–before collapsing in the tiebreaker. Still, he is 49-19 for the season and is coming off a runner-up finish in Paris.
Murray’s performance against Nishikori was a relatively poor one and certainly a rare one. London’s No. 5 seed had been 20-3 this fall with titles in Shenzhen, Vienna, and Valencia.
Although Murray is generally at outstanding returner, he has always struggled against Raonic and he also failed to capitalize on a dreadful serving day by Nishikori. Don’t be surprised if this is the continuation of tough week in London for one of the crowd favorites.
Pick: Raonic in 3
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Whatever was wrong on Sunday, I’m hoping for his sake that Murray will get his act together today. Even if he can’t win at least he owes the O2 crowd a decent match.
They have been short changed so far by most of the matches.
So far so good from Murray. As many people suspected beforehand, Raonic is handicapped by his lack of experience on the big stage.
Should have said ‘fairly limited experience…….’
Raonic has come to life. Watch out Murray.
Raonic’s serve has gone AWOL and the rest of his game does’t exist.
Murray gets the job done but he had a fight on his hands in the second set.
Even when Raonic’s serve is firing, he really is beatable. He doesn’t move well and not very accurate with his shots.
Luckily for Andy the Raonic serve was not on song this evening and he was leaking UEs.
It’s nice to see Andy pick up a trophy.
Well done, Muzz, but signs are not good I’m thinking, Here’s hoping Raonic’s game doesn’t show up! The one game where Raonic did turn on the style, he broke Muzz at the first time of asking:-(
I don’t see Raonic doing Muzz any favours against Kei tomorrow as I thinking he’s pretty much a spent force this year, but fingers crossed. It’d be terrible for Muzz to beat Roger and still go out – he’s gone out that way before, if my memory serves me right.
Thursday
Are thinking of 2008 when he spilt his guts on court to beat Federer in the RR but had nothing left when he faced Davydenko in the SF? The irony was he didn’t need to have beaten Federer to go through to the SF.
Or maybe you’re thinking of the ‘Tanks Fed’ banner in ’09………………..when Federer lost to del Potro.
I think it’s going to be a great match, and a close one, but I like Andy in 3.
well you at least got the Andy part right, but probably should have gotten both the sets and the exact score correct, too, given the fact that this pick was made AFTER the match
Good for Andy with this win. It would be nice to see him end the year on a high note here.