Milos Raonic upsets Andy Murray in the semi-finals – Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships 2012
Most stunning outcome of the running week was witnessed on the hard courts of Tokyo on Saturday afternoon when the US Open champion, Andy Murray, suffered a cracking defeat in the semi-finals of the Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships. The top seeded Brit laboured extremely hard for two hours and 46 minutes before the Canadian number one, Milos Raonic, outmuscled him to clinch the upset victory. Raonic claimed the three-set thriller at 6-3, 6-7(5), 7-6(4), earning a berth in the title match of the ATP World Tour 500 event in Japan.
It was hardly expected that Murray would fall so cheaply to an inferior-ranked opponent. The Brit is currently the best form of his life, winning the Olympic gold medal and his maiden Grand Slam championship title at the US Open. The world number three was rated as the hot favourite for winning the Japan Open Tennis Championships but an absolute brilliant display of high-quality tennis from Raonic just beat all the odds of the competition.
Murray had recently defeated Raonic in straight sets, 6-4, 6-4, 6-2, in the fourth round of his successful US Open campaign but the 21-year-old Canadian youngster avenged his loss on Saturday to break into a 2-1 lead in the all-time head-to-head series against the Briton.
Raonic posted a top notch performance right from the beginning of the contest and struck early to bag the opening set. He was going very strong in the following set as well but Murray managed to drag the set into a tie-break. The top seeded Scott succeeded in getting past his belligerent rival and bagged the second set to bring him down to even terms. The decisive third was a complete replication of the previous one, with the world number three struggling to put breaks to the impetus of Raonic. Murray again squared off the Canadian youngster in a tie-breaker round but it was Raonic’s time to turn the tables on the top seed. The 21-year-old raced past the hot favourite contender and concluded his surprise victory at 7-6(4) in the decider.
Raonic banged in 13 thudding aces but double faulted seven times in the match. He broke the British serve three out of seven times, bagging 59 out of 72 first serve points en route to victory. Murray could merely register one break point out of his six chances in the entire matchup to finish on the losing side in the end.
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