With the trauma of the Canadian high school shooting weighing heavily on his mind, Milos Raonic has produced a fighting win over Viktor Troicki to reach the fourth round of Australian Open.
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Raonic will face either Lukas Rosol of the Czech Republic or Siwtzerland’s Stan Wawrinka, the No. 4 seed, in the next round.
All Offers and Promotions posted in this article excludes NSW residents. He has yet to lose a match in 2016, defeating Roger Federer in the final of the Brisbane International prior to the start of the Aussie Open.
“Today’s victory was for that community and (to wish) a quick recovery”.
Raised in Toronto, 13th seed Raonic found out about the shooting after warming up in the morning and had to push it out of his mind before taking on Troicki.
In the third set Raonic had a pair of match points on the Robredo serve when the Spaniard was trailing 15-40 and 4-5. All of Canada, and I’m sure the world, is behind you.
The big-serving Canadian finally broke Robredo’s serve at the 12th attempt and in the 36th game to win it 7-6 (8/6), 7-6 (7/5), 7-5 and reach the third round after two hours and 55 minutes.
Raonic caught the sideline with a service victor to set up match point and advanced when Troicki returned long over the baseline.
“I don’t think I played as clean as I would have liked, but at the end of the day, the most important thing is I got the win”, Raonic said.
Konta, who was born in Sydney and became a British citizen in 2012, beat Denisa Allertova 6-2, 6-2 and will next play No. 21 Ekaterina Makarova, a semifinalist here previous year, who had a 6-3, 6-2 win over No. 9 Karolina Pliskova.
“It was a hard day at home”.
“I really don’t count the games”, she said after Thursday’s match.
“I felt that after the match would be a little bit more appropriate for my thought, focus, and everything”.
Konta said she knew what to expect from Allertova, who stretched her to three sets in the first round at last year’s French Open.
Raonic is trying to follow up on his best career result in Melbourne after advancing into the quarter-finals last season where he lost to Novak Djokovic.
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Strycova has only been past the third round once before in 38 Grand Slams, and that was when she reached the quarterfinals of Wimbledon in 2014.
