Confident Raonic Serves Past Clay-Court Veteran

Milos Raonic relied on his most destructive weapon – his serve – to fight back and prevail against a clay-court veteran on Wednesday at Roland Garros. The fifth-seeded Canadian struck 25 aces, including four in the final game, to beat Brazilian Rogerio Dutra Silva 4-6, 6-2, 6-3, 6-4 and move into the third round.

“There’s some pluses to take out of it, some things I definitely want to do better. Obviously, I was very competitive. I felt a little bit sluggish to start. Sort of let him really into it, and you could see that he started believing after a while, and that’s always a dangerous state. I managed to weather the storm and hold it out throughout that match,” Raonic said.

Raonic remains on track to match his best showing in Paris, the quarter-finals in 2014, when he fell to Novak Djokovic. The 6’5” right-hander fell in the fourth round last year to Spaniard Albert Ramos-Vinolas.

This fortnight, however, Raonic arrives at the season’s second Grand Slam with newfound reasons for optimism. He reached his first clay-court final at the TEB BNP Paribas Istanbul Open this month before falling to then-World No. 8 Marin Cilic.

At the Internazionali BNL d’Italia in Rome, Raonic was edged out in the quarter-finals by eventual champion Alexander Zverev. Last week in Lyon, Raonic again made a deep run, making the last four before falling to Czech veteran Tomas Berdych.

The Canadian also has his health in Paris. Earlier this year, he had to withdraw from matches in Delray Beach and Miami, and had to completely miss Acapulco and Indian Wells.

Still, Raonic’s second-round match against Dutra Silva was anything but straightforward. Fifteen of Dutra Silva’s 21 tour-level wins have come on clay, and the 33 year old favours the surface more than any other, having played eight of his 10 tour-level events this season on clay.

Dutra Silva broke twice to take the first set, but Raonic responded, breaking in the sixth and eighth games of the second set to even the match. In the third set, at 3-2, Raonic converted his fifth break point of the game to go up 4-2 before eventually taking the set.

The Canadian was at his best in the fourth and final set. At 4-4, with Dutra Silva serving, Raonic lost his first six break points. But on Raonic’s seventh chance, Dutra Silva netted a forehand and the Brazilian wouldn’t touch another ball. Literally. Raonic served four consecutive aces to end the match.

He said it was at least the third time he’s finished a tour-level match with four straight aces. “I could name three matches off the top of my head: today; Robin Haase in Paris indoors; and my first match, I think it was against [Carlos] Berlocq the year I lost second round at Wimbledon [2013],” Raonic said.

From ?? to ??.@milosraonic into the third round for the 5th time here in Paris ➡️https://t.co/Mcqaj6QaBt.#RG17 pic.twitter.com/lbFrFlJ3E6

— Roland-Garros (@rolandgarros) May 31, 2017

The fifth seed will next face Spaniard Guillermo Garcia-Lopez, who beat Argentine qualifier Marco Trungelliti 7-5, 6-4, 7-5. Raonic leads their FedEx ATP Head2Head series 2-0 but their last match was three years ago.

In other action, 10^th seed David Goffin saw 16 break points and converted four of them to advance to the third round 6-2, 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 against Ukrainian qualifier Sergiy Stakhovsky. Last year, Goffin achieved his best result at a Grand Slam when he reached the Roland Garros quarter-finals (l. to Thiem).

Goffin will next face Argentine Horacio Zeballos, who withstood 29 aces from Croatian Ivo Karlovic to advance 7-6(5), 7-6(5), 6-3 in two hours and 13 minutes.

Go inside the tournament at RolandGarros.com.