Many a tennis result gets labelled an upset because of numbers on paper. Often though, these upsets are anything but. Sometimes the lower ranked player is a bad match up for the higher ranked one, or the seeded player is coming back from injury. But Milos Raonic’s 4-6, 6-3, 6-7 (3) loss to Simone Bolelli was a true upset in every sense of the word.
Raonic has, arguably, the game’s best serve, and it should bite through the fast indoor courts of Marseille. For much of the match, it did. Raonic hit 21 aces, won 88 % of points behind his first serve, and 62 percent of his second service points.
However, where Raonic has made great strides, yet where he still falters, was the return. Raonic had 8 break points in the match, and could convert just one of them.
But while Raonic could not get the breaks he needed, he had the advantage of his service weapon when the final set went into a tiebreaker, and the odds seemed stacked in his favor in a shoot out in which one slip up on serve is enough to seal your fate . Raonic is also one of the game’s most consistent players, ranked no. 6, while Bolelli, ranked 53, had never scored a top ten win in his career. Recent history favored Raonic, too, as Raonic led Bolelli 2-0 in their head to head, including one win indoors last week in Rotterdam.
That match Bolelli lost on a second set tiebreaker, but this time he had managed to stay with Roanic right down to the wire and his self belief and tenacity paid off as he proved to be the steadier of the two in the breaker, grabbing an early minibreak and then holding serve to 6-3.
Raonic served to stay in the match, but the Canadian hit a forehand into the net to hand Bolelli his first win in 35 tries against a top ten player.
Raonic said after the match, in which he won 96 points to his opponent’s 88, that Bolelli won the points that mattered, a perfect sum up of what made the difference between the two.
Meanwhile, an example of when an upset is hardly a surprise at all took place when France’s 35th ranked Jeremy Chardy beat world No.13 and defending champion Ernests Gulbis 6-3, 6-4. The Latvian, who is vulnerable to upsets at the best of times and is now going through one of his worst, has been injured since the U.S Open 2014 and is 0-4 in 2015.
Commentary by Christian Deverille
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