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3/16/11 5:20 AM | James Munoz
American Ryan Harrison plays the match of his life in front of a packed house as he takes down rising Canadian star Milos Raonic.
With the opportunity to play Roger Federer looming, many expected Milos Raonic to have a routine victory over his much lower-ranked opponent. The 20-year-old rising star is the talk of the tour with his humble demeanor and big game. The match had a capacity crowd with long lines into the stadium hoping to catch a glimpse of this match.
For those lucky enough to get into the stadium, they were treated to spectacular tennis. 18-year-old Ryan Harrison was more than up for the challenge as he stood on the baseline and smacked Raonic’s opening first serve right at his knees. Shocked by the aggressiveness of his younger opponent, Raonic was slow to react and hit the ball into the net. Raonic was able to hold serve in the opening game, but the message was sent that this would be a battle.
The crowd seemed to be evenly split in who they would be rooting for and both players gave plenty of reason to cheer with their play. Both players were serving great, often in the 130s and the returners took a lot of chances going for winners. The more subdued Raonic seemed to be confused by his inability to hit winners in the match as Harrison ran down everything in the court. The normally steady Raonic forehand began to go for too much on Harrison’s serve which contributed to more errors and relatively easy holds.
The first set would go to a tiebreaker as neither player was able to overcome their opponent’s great serving for an entire service game. In the tie breaker, Harrison once again came out firing on his serve and returns. The young American became even more vocal on each point after picking up the mini-break. Raonic attempted to hit harder forehands, but these only contributed to more unforced errors as he would lose the set 7-6 (7-1).
The second progressed similar to the first as both players held serve with ease until 4-4. The next service game saw Raonic make more errors to fall behind 0-40. The young Canadian regained his composure and fought back to take the game. Harrison, dismayed at the missed opportunity would also fall behind 0-40 on his serve. Harrison was able to save two set points, but he could not hold off the power of Raonic in the next point as he would lose the set 6-4.
The final set could not have started off worse for Raonic as he surrendered a break of serve with more long forehand errors. Harrison went up 5-2 and tried serve out the match. The combination of nerves and a more focused Raonic led to a break of serve though.
Earlier in the match Raonic would attempt to punish serves rather than keeping the ball in play, but he abandoned this when down 5-2 and forced Harrison to come up with the winning shot. Raonic took the next two games to make the match even more interesting. With Harrison serving at 5-4, both players gave their all and had opportunities to close out the game. After several long rallies, Harrison came out on top 6-4.
Harrison moves on to take on Roger Federer as the final night match on Wednesday.
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Ha! I knew he has potential! Go Ryan!
ts38 , 3/16/11 6:47 AM
It's wonderful to see ryan play with so much confidence. I hope the USTA is happy.
Von , 3/16/11 8:21 AM
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match of the tournament, probably best-of-three match of the year so far
RickyDimon , 3/16/11 6:35 AM