Everyone’s said that Milos Raonic is perhaps the best of the new bunch, and in this match, he began to show some of the reason people believe this.  Raonic has a huge serve, but much like most men his size, he’s opted to play big man tennis.  Tall players like Querrey, Isner, and Anderson have opted for hitting very hard to compensate for lack of raw speed.

Murray didn’t do any favors by getting broken immediately.  He struggled with breaking serve, and in fact didn’t do so in the first two sets despite some chances.  Murray was broken twice in the first set to lose 6-3.  In the second set, Murray did a better job of holding serve and held to a tiebreak.  Murray held all his serve points, but Raonic did too until very late in the tiebreak when Murray hit a deep crosscourt return that Raonic couldn’t run around and tried a face to the net tweener.

Murray appeared to be reading Raonic’s serve better and Raonic was making more errors.  Murray managed a break in the middle of the third set, and that appeared to be all he needed, but a loose game, and Murray was broken.  The two held serve until the tiebreak.  Late in the third set tiebreak, Murray hit a routine shot in the net and the missed another point.  He got one point back with a Raonic double fault.  Raonic hit a let, then hit a spinny wide serve that Murray hit deep and Raonic got his upset win.

Raonic, in particular, did a great job coming to net, taking a lot of low shots and volleying them well.  It appears that he’s been working on these low volleys.  With Murray’s predilection for hitting passing shots crosscourt, Raonic had some idea where the passes would go.  Raonic has also done a better job of being aggressive off his forehand, hitting powerful shots to either corner.  In particular, his inside out forehands did damage time and again.

Raonic will face the winner of Nishikori and Baghdatis.