IT is just as well that Andy Murray enjoys figuring out puzzles because he will be faced with a serious challenge when he plays his third-round match at the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami today – returning the Milos Raonic serve.
"The Missile", as world No 26 Raonic has been dubbed, possesses one of the best serves in the game and is one of the brightest hopes for the next gener-ation coming along behind Murray and the world's top three, Novak Djokovic, Rafa Nadal and Roger Federer.
Born in Montenegro, Raonic moved to Canada when he was three and owes most of his development to the help he received there. But his height and his serving ability comes right out of the Serbo-Croat school of great servers, which includes Goran Ivanisevic, Ivan Ljubicic and Mario Ancic. Raonic has even been compared to his idol, Pete Sampras, for his willingness to go for broke on his second serve and his ability to hit his spots.
Certainly Murray, who eased fears of a second double-dip in the space of a year with a confident 6-2, 6-3 win over Alejandro Falla in round one, knows he will need to play well. "He's got a huge serve – he's serving over 140mph regularly – and he's a tough, tough guy to play against," the Scot said.
Having lost his first match in Indian Wells, Murray looks confident and relaxed in Miami, where he has an apartment and where his girlfriend Kim has joined him to add support. But it is an extra week in the company of coach Ivan Lendl that appears to have done wonders.
"The first thing he said to me was, 'Don't worry about it [his defeat] at all. Don't overthink it'. He actually said that if he had had his way he would never have played at Indian Wells because he didn't like the conditions there," Murray said.
"I spoke to all of the guys. Everyone said, 'Your attitude was good in practice. You did everything that they asked you to do off the court'.
"When we got on the court here we just got back to working on all of the stuff I was doing before Dubai, before Australia, and just got back to doing the basics. He asks a lot of questions to understand why you chose to hit a certain shot or what your favourite shots in certain moments are. He's been very, very good with that, which is not the case with all coaches."
In Indian Wells, Raonic took the first set off Federer in their third-round clash and believes he is on the right track. "I feel like I'm a much better player and I am getting closer to these guys," he said. "I feel if we do play many, many times, obviously they'll win most of them, but I will have my opportunities on a few times."
Murray and Raonic have never played, but the Canadian knows what he has to do. "Obviously I have to serve well," he said. "But I'm fortunate enough that I have the type of game style where I can impose and dictate. So I don't feel like I need to change too much. I just need to clean up a few things. If I do that I will have my opportunities."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article