MELBOURNE: Third seed Milos Raonic came safely through a potentially tricky match against Roberto Bautista Agut 7-6(8-6) 3-6 6-4 6-1 on Monday to reach the Australian Open quarter-finals for the third straight year. The Canadian, the highest surviving seed after the early departures of Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic, rarely hit his usual heights in the two hour, 52 minute contest on Hisense Arena. The 26-year-old produced his best tennis when it mattered, though, coming back from 5-1 down in the tiebreaker to win the first set and finally got some breathing space by saving break points and breaking the world number 13 to win the third set.
Teak tough Bautista Agut is nothing if not a fighter but required treatment on his left leg before Raonic raced away with the fourth set and sealed the victory with a crunching forehand winner down the line.
“I guess there’s always that sort of match where you sort of fall off,” Raonic told reporters.
“It’s a long two weeks. So I guess unfortunately that was it for me today. So I’m happy I was able to solve that.”
The match was a stop-start affair because of a few passing showers and it was only when Raonic insisted the roof be closed that the Canadian stamped his authority on the match.
Raonic had complained of a fever after his third-round victory and looked flat in the opening set before coming alive to win the tiebreaker and taking a service break to open the second.
“I still don’t necessarily feel at full capacity,” he added. “I have energy now. I can go about my days normally. Sort of on the tail end of the recovery.”
Bautista Agut enjoyed good fortune when his running pass took a deflection off the net tape to allow him to break back and the Spaniard rattled off five of the next six games to even up the contest.
The third set was a cat-and-mouse affair until Raonic again ramped up his game to secure the break he needed to go 2-1 up and Bautista Agut was barely able to draw breath before he was 5-0 down in the fourth.
Raonic, who fired down 33 aces and 75 winners, will next meet 2009 champion Rafael Nadal or Gael Monfils as he continues his quest for a maiden grand slam title.
Even with Murray and Djokovic gone, though, he was looking no further ahead than his next match. “I just know who I play next, I don’t know who I was supposed to play and this kind of stuff,” he said.
“I’m pretty intent on staying in that moment.”
KONTA EYES CHILDHOOD DREAM
Johanna Konta earned the chance to fulfill a childhood dream when she advanced to an Australian Open quarter-final contest against Serena Williams by dismantling Ekaterina Makarova 6-1 6-4 on Monday.
The 25-year-old ninth seed, Britain’s last hope of a singles title after Andy Murray and Dan Evans were bundled out on Sunday, took 69 minutes to send her Russian opponent packing in temperatures approaching 35 degrees Celsius.
It secured her a first meeting with 22-times grand slam champion Williams, who won the first of her six Melbourne Park crowns when Konta was an 11-year-old growing up in the Sydney suburbs.
“She’s one of the players still playing who I looked up to as a young girl wanting to be a professional tennis player,” said Konta.
“It’s an incredible honour and I will cherish every moment out there.”
It was with her run to the semi-finals as world number 47 at Melbourne Park last year that Konta first gave notice that she had the game to take on the best in the world.
Extensive work with a sports psychologist had helped Konta rid her game of the mental collapses in big moments that marred the early years of her career and on Monday she explained how she was now able to cope.
“When you get to a position where you might see a glimmer of what you have dreamed of as a little girl or what you hoped for, what you’ve worked so hard for, it can feel kind of an all-or-nothing moment or, ‘What if I never get this chance again-’” she told reporters.
“You have also got to have a good perspective on things, and you’ve got to keep, I guess, the simple things in mind of what’s important to you.
“Are you healthy- Is your family healthy- Do you have people around you that you love- Do you have people around you that love you-
“I know it might sound really mundane and simple, but you’ve got to go back to things that have got substance, and then in the end just trust in the work that you do.” Konta has shown enormous mental fortitude in reaching the last eight without dropping a set after demolishing the hopes of Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki, Japan’s Naomi Osaka and Belgium’s Kirsten Flipkens. — Reuters
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