Milos Raonic Gears Up for Richard Gasquet at US Open

The last Canadian standing is looking to make a breakthrough on Monday in Flushing Meadows. Milos Raonic takes on #8 seed Richard Gasquet for a place in the quarter finals at the US Open. Al Dannity previews this huge clash at Louis Armstrong Stadium.

It takes something exceptional for a lower ranked player to be favoured in a match at this stage of a grand slam. Normally that something is a consistently stronger player being ranked lower due to absence through injury. This was the case with Rafael Nadal for much of the spring swing. Today’s clash between #10 seed Milos Raonic and #8 seed Richard Gasquet sees the Canadian favoured for rather different reasons.

Gasquet is an incredibly reliable player. His year-round consistency makes him a favourite with bettors, particularly in the early rounds of tournaments. The Frenchman’s weakness is also a matter of consistency. He holds a career record of 1-16 at the fourth round of grand slams. It’s actually difficult to be this bad at a specific stage of a tournament with such regularity. Normally aberrant results would ensure Gasquet would either fail to advance this far so often or he’d catch a break and make a few quarter finals. The lone exception to his run of futility came in 2007. At Wimbledon the Frenchman was #12 seed and overcame three of his countrymen, Nicolas Mahut, Edouard Roger-Vasselin, and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, en route to the semi-finals. His first three opponents were qualifiers and Tsonga was a wild card that year. The draw couldn’t have broken any kinder. Gasquet legitimised his run with a quarter-final victory over Andy Roddick before falling to Roger Federer in straight sets.

The past two seasons have seen Gasquet scale new heights in futility. In six straight majors, beginning at the 2012 Australian Open, he made the fourth round and lost every time. The run was only broken by his third round exit at Wimbledon this year. Truly this is a man who, with one major exception, can’t catch a break.

Raonic won’t be thinking about the demons that fester within Gasquet’s mind. The Canadian has one objective and that is to make a grand slam quarter final for the first time in his career. Having made the fourth round a year ago, the Canadian will be hungry to build on his promising summer. A four set victory over Feliciano Lopez will have done wonders for Raonic’s confidence, particularly as he had a poor reputation for fading after losing tie breakers. That mental hurdle was swept aside in dominant fashion in the third round. Lopez took the breaker in the first set but Raonic rebounded to win 6-7 6-4 6-3 6-4. Today the Canadian has a chance to build on that victory and make a little bit of history in the process.