Toronto – round 3rd + QF’s

The heavy rain on Thursday didn’t allow to play a single point outdoors. The officials decided to appoint doubles matches on a humble indoor venue. Before it happened, the gold medalist from London, Andy Murray withdrew from his match against Milos Raonic [24] due to left knee injury. The Scot had done it previously in Dubai 2009: “I did a little warm-up on the bike to try it out and it was still sore, so I had to make a decision as to what I was going to do… I don’t want to go full out and possibly do any more damage. That was why I decided not to play.” Earlier this year, in Miami, it was Raonic who gave a walkover to Murray.
The rain fell again on Friday, but all scheduled matches were concluded – third round in day session, quarterfinals in night session. Janko Tipsarevic, Richard Gasquet, John Isner and Novak Djokovic, in this order, managed to win two matches within a day, ‘Tipsy’ saved the most energy winning both of them in easy straight setters. “For sure it’s tough, but I think he played one more hour than me in the morning with Monaco so it made a little bit of a difference, I think,” analyzed Gasquet [21] the two-match task. “I tried to fight a lot and then I defended well and I played a good match. But for sure to play two matches in a day, it’s very difficult.” The hardships of participating in two matches the same day were visible in doings of veterans: 31-year-old Mardy Fish and three years older Tommy Haas. They hadn’t fuel left in the tank playing their sixth set of the day against much more younger opponents – Gasquet and Djokovic respectively. However kudos to Haas for taking a set off Djokovic and showing impressive fighting spirit in the last game as he won a 31-stroke rally and got to ‘deuce’ thrice (the Serb won 6-3 3-6 6-3 five minutes before midnight, celebrating it on the knees). Haas is good to watch these days, very wise in shot selection, uses all his big experience to deliver an interesting, diversified tennis, and doesn’t complain as much as in the past… Raonic wasted a wonderful opportunity to make a breakthrough tournament. He had two days off while his quarterfinal rival, Isner was forced to play a tough 3-setter a couple hours before. In respect of that, the home crowd could expect its best player at least in the final – the inconsistent Gasquet would be beatable in the semis. Raonic couldn’t consolidate a break advantage in the 1st set against Isner though, afterwards blew a set point in a tie-break (8:7*) and lost 6-7(9) 4-6. There was a time at the beginning of the year when Raonic seemed very reliable mentally, since the Memphis final he has been actually losing all tight encounters. “I felt all right out there, and I thought I would feel fine,” Isner said. “The way I looked at it is I was at a bit of an advantage, in my opinion, because he hadn’t played in a few days.”