David Ferrer defeats Milos Raonic; breezes into the quarters at the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters
4th seeded Spaniard David Ferrer eased past rising star Canadian Milos Raonic with a breadstick on Thursday. He registered a 6-1, 6-3 win over the 20-year-old Canadian to advance to the quarter-finals of the 2011 Monte-Carlo
Rolex Masters.
Ranked 6th in the South African Airways ATP World Tour Rankings, Ferrer is in great form this season sporting a 17-4 win loss record. He won the title at Auckland and Acapulco and made a semi-final berth at Australian
Open. The Spaniard reached quarter-finals at Miami where he lost to 14th seeded American Mardy Fish before entering this tournament.
In this ATP World Tour Masters 1000 event at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, he received a bye into the second round where he destroyed his countryman, Feliciano Lopez with a bagel to reach this spot. He overpowered the booming star Raonic
in 77 minutes with a breadstick and cruises his way to quarters.
In the opening set, the 29-year-old Spaniard displayed awe-inspiring skills from the start and held his serve in the first game. After the scores were squared at 1-1, Ferrer went on savage mode and reeled off next five games in
a row. In the sixth game, he broke the erratic Raonic’s serve for the second time and made the score 5-1. He then used his angled serves to perfection to hold his serve in the proceeding game to clinch the set with a breadstick.
Ferrer keeps the momentum rolling and breaks the youngster’s serve in the very first game. He later held his serve plausibly and extended the lead to 2-0. However he lost his serve in the fourth game to level the scores at 2-2.
After the scores were levelled at 3-3, Ferrer got full charged up and won the next three games with utmost tact to eventually seal the set with a 6-3 win.
He slammed nine winners and had a 53 percent of first serve share. The Spaniard also found ten breakpoint opportunities of which he converted five to his advantage to win the match comfortably.
World number 34, Raonic won the title at San Jose and reached final at Memphis earlier this season. However, he lost to Ferrer before at Australian Open and repeated the history here in Monaco. The Canadian has now extended the
trail in his head-to-head series by 0-2 against Ferrer.
The Spanish seed will next face the winner of the match between 11th seeded Serb Viktor Troicki and Spaniard Tommy Robredo and with his current form, he can overcome threat from any player in the tournament.
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