@Sportshorn
Wednesday afternoon the crowds in Montreal were on their feet with excitement as 18 year old Denis Shapovalov upset Juan Martin Del Potro to move into the third round at the Rogers Cup. Just a few hours later, fans in Montreal were stunned as World No 9 Milos Raonic crashed out of the tournament in the second round losing to 42nd ranked Adrian Mannarino 6-4 6-4.
Raonic admitted after the loss he has been bothered by a left wrist injury and it definitely showed in the match. The injury, which was called “minor” by tournament organizers, turned out to be anything but. Raonic said it had flared up so much he couldn’t even hold a racquet two days ago. Tests showed fluid in the wrist and the 26-year old had been taking anti-imflamatories to calm it down. Mannarino new something was up and smartly picked on his opponents backhand throughout the one hour and 16 minute contest. Of the 28 unforced errors made by Raonic in the match, 16 came on the backhand side.
“It’s an injury that a lot of — to some extent a lot of tennis players have,” said a visibly dejected Raonic. “To me it’s just really flared up over the last few days. I wasn’t able to even hold the racquet two days ago. That’s why I did request if I could have as many hours as possible before I stepped on court to play….I hope that today wasn’t really a setback, and that I can over these next days continue to calm it down and try to get it under control as much as possible.”
Mannarino, who had his own injury problems earlier this year, won the first eight points of the match and broke Raonic twice in the opening set including the first game of the match at Love. The hard hitting Canadian was held without an ace and his first serve percentage was just 54 percent.
The players held serve throughout the first eight games of the second set but it was the Frenchman who converted in the ninth game to break Raonic again. In the following game, Mannarino served out the match to win for just the second time at the Rogers Cup His first victory came yesterday.
“I wanted to have definitely a different storyline here,” said Raonic. “It wasn’t necessarily the case. It is what it is. Hopefully I can turn it around very quickly because today was not a level of tennis to be proud of. I wasn’t sharp enough with what I needed to be sharp with. On the serve, I guess I just let too many other things that were going on get to me, and I didn’t necessarily ever get around to really focusing on it completely and making him uncomfortable.”
The courts in Montreal certainly haven’t been too kind to Raonic over the years. He did reach the Final here in 2013 but in his three other appearances he has never been past the second round. In his last three appearances in Toronto he has bowed out in the quarter-finals.
Raonic did say that if the tournament wasn’t on home soil he might have considered withdrawing because of his injury.
