Review Author MoreTennis
Game preview : Washington ATP500 second round going to end this day with a lot of wonderful matches, one of them is Raonic Milos(10) from Canada versus Mahut Nicolas(111) from France. It will be clash of the generations, 8 year difference between players and age can be deciding factor of the match. Nicolas is 35 years old and this season is completly disaster for him, he lost his favourite tournament on grass, all grass season was so promising for him, but it ended really bad, from top 40 Nicolas droped to 111th position. Milos Raonic is still young, but not young young, he already have a lot of experience, but this season ain't so good too, he didn't reach Wimbledon final like last year, he played really bad in first two tournaments on grass. Both towers will meet for first time, it will be fun to see good serving players on fast court.
Let's talk about players :
Milos Raonic : 26 years old player who originaly came from Montenegro now plays for Canada. He is tall, almost 2metres height and 100Kg so that is solid for tower like him. Yes we can say his main factor to win is serve, but no like John Isner, without serve canadian still can play very solid game, he is fast and strong and play really good at the net. In past few years he had many injures and we see now he is sliping away from Top10, it's matter of time when he will drop out of top10, unless he will get more healthy and physically well. This year his score on hard 11/6 not bad, but he can improve it, but can he reach last year 29/8 ? We don't think so...
Mahut Nicolas - Frenchman who is 35 years old and play very nice old style of tennis, he isn't afraid of running to the net after serve, after good hit from forehand, he is one of the best players near net, why so? He is also top player in doubles and in doubles you must play good near net, you need have great reaction to ball so from doubles to singles he transfered a lot of good play, but sadly this year he don't play good at all. In first round he finally won after 4 matches loosing streak, but in 10 last matches he won only 2 times. 190cm tall and 80kg weight player have 6/5 hard score this year, but anyway he never was good on hard court, espacially outside, all career record is 146/141. Frenchman is very good on grass and indoors courts.
Comparing the players : Both players are tall and serves well, but there are few different things, maybe Nicolas is older and year by year his career is coming to end, but he can teach few things younger canadian. In general they both uses same technique a lot of time - Serve and volley, but Nicolas is much more better on this style, Milos not always feels when to run to the net, how to control ball, how to take hard shot near legs at this Nicolas is much better, he often do all shot really well, but there are side thing of this style, Mahut is really slow at the time and Milos is fast as hell, if they could trasnfer best qualities and make one player he would became no.1 easy. In game play we see Milos with simple style, he hits fast forehands, he hits sliced shots but thats all... While Mahut can make wonderfull dropshots, make a mixed rally and that helped in his old age to be in top40 for few years.
What to expect today : It's hard to say, but at the end Raonič will be in the center of the court giving intervie about his victory. Frenchman may be very good player, have a good qualities on court, but he is out of shape and play's not he best tennis right now. One thing which can make a dificulties for Canadian is that he played a long time ago and this match will be first for him.
.png?v=1.014689135)
