WHAT HAPPENED: Milos Raonic followed up his run to the Western & Southern Open final with a dominant Round 1 victory over Leonardo Mayer at the 2020 US Open. Victory was never in doubt for the 6-foot-5 Canadian, with the scoreline finalizing at 6-3, 6-2, 6-3.
Raonic was firing early on Court 17, racing through the opening game with three unreturned serves and one big forehand. He continued to set the tone with a break in Mayer’s first service game, before a second love hold in which he clocked four first serves—none of which came back, including a 129-mph service winner to go up 3-0. He dropped four points on serve in set one.
The 29-year-old broke twice in the second set, creating real daylight when a forehand winner capped a 16-ball rally to make it 5-2. After serving out the set to love, he broke in the opening game of the third on a double fault.
Raonic cruised from there, finishing the match with 14 aces and facing no break points on the night.
"For me, the most important thing was to leave last week behind quickly in two days and understand and not expect like last week automatically carries over, but that I start fresh," the Canadian said after the match.
"Hopefully, with the experience and the matches from last week, I can find my game a little bit quicker. I think I started off pretty well today."
WHAT IT MEANS: Raonic has improved to 6-1 since the resumption of the ATP Tour, with all six of those wins coming at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in the past 11 days.
Next up is countryman Vasik Pospisil in Round 2, with No. 8 seed Roberto Bautistsa Agut lurking as a potential third-round opponent.
"I can't remember the first time we played," Raonic said of Pospisil. "I think he won pretty [much] of all them through our junior career, then I won pretty much all of them except the last one through our professional careers. It's going to be a fun match."
Mayer, meanwhile, drops to 0-8 on the 2020 season and extends an 11-match losing streak dating back to last year. He reached the French Open Round of 16 in 2020, and reached the Wimbledon fourth round in 2014—his best Grand Slam singles results.
MATCH POINT: Raonic is the No. 25 seed in New York, but has risen to No. 18 in the ATP Rankings after his Cincy run—one spot behind Canadian No. 1 Denis Shapovalov. With no ranking points on the board for Raonic after he missed the 2019 US Open, he’s got a real chance to surpass his countryman with a good run this fortnight. Felix Auger-Aliassime, who also won on Tuesday, is also in the hunt for No.1 Canadian.
