Tennis: Monte Carlo Meltdown for Milos Raonic

The clay court season got off to a terrible start for Milos Raonic as he went down in his opening match in Monte Carlo to Albert Montanes. Al Dannity assesses the damage and the prospects for Raonic on the dusty road to Paris.

Don’t blame the surface
Milos Raonic has regularly been compared to Pete Sampras but unlike his role model, Raonic can have no complaints about a poor start to the clay court season. Having skipped Houston and Casablanca, Raonic’s first taste of red dust came in a 6-2 3-6 6-2 loss to Spain’s Albert Montanes. After picking up two tournament wins already this season, the Canadian would have been hopeful of making an impression at one of the premier events on the calendar. Montanes will progress to face #7 seed Janko Tipsarevic, who Raonic beat in the final of Chennai back in January.

Historically power servers had issues with clay but the way courts are designed in the modern era leaves little difference between surfaces. Raonic’s failure to do more than what was expected of him in the year’s other big tournaments along with this defeat point worryingly to a holding pattern. He’s getting it done in places like San Jose and Memphis but when the big guns come out Raonic has been left wanting. Outside of Chennai, where he also beat then World #10 Nicolas Almagro, Raonic hasn’t beaten a player ranked higher than #35 this season.

Chances for progress
Raonic has over a month to get his game back on track before the French Open. After such an early exit in Monte Carlo, Raonic won’t have to wait long to try and make amends. The Thornhill, Ontario player will head to Barcelona next week where he will be the #12 seed. That field looks set to be strong and unsurprisingly Raonic has not declared for any of the tournaments in the week between Barcelona and Madrid.

The two week slog between the Master Series tournaments Madrid and Rome is almost as much as test as the French Open itself. Raonic knows strong displays in this events will leave him in good standing to improve on his unimpressive debut in Paris last year. After a first round exit at the French Open last year, the only way is up for Raonic in Paris this summer. He just needs to get out of this holding pattern.

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