Milos Raonic (Julian Finney, Getty Images)
The great season for Canadian tennis great Milos Raonic of Thornhill, Ontario is continuing.
Saturday he defeated France’s Gilles Simon 7-6, 4-6, 6-3 to advance to the semi-finals against one of his most intriguing rivals early on in his career, Spain’s Fernando Verdasco, at the Estoril Open in Portugal.
Raonic, ranked 27th in the world, has defeated Verdasco, ranked fifteenth, twice this year. Raonic beat Verdasco 7-6, 7-6 in the final of the ATP World Tour SAP Open in San Jose, California on February 13 and then beat Verdasco 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 in the first round of the Regions Morgan Keegan Championship in Memphis, Tennessee.
But Verdaco my have the slight edge here because of the surface. He simply has more experience playing on clay than Raonic.
In the other semi-final, former U.S. Open Champion Juan Martin del Potro of Argentina is currently playing Pablo Cuevas of Uruguay. del Potro’s world ranking at 46 is very deceiving because he missed nine months of action in 2010 because of a wrist injury. His dominant victories over Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer at the 2009 U.S. Open prove he is definitely a top ten player when healthy.
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