Milos Raonic Loses Historic Tennis Match at the Olympics

The Olympics bring out the best of all the countries athletes every four years and that was certainly on display in the Tennis at Wimbledon yesterday. Milos Raonic of Canada was facing Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France in an historic tennis game that lasted just under four hours and had 48 games in the 3^rd and final set. 

Unfortunately for Canada, Milos Raonic didn’t have enough energy to upset the heavily favored French man. The two went back and fourth holding serve numerous times. In the Olympic Tennis tournament, there is no tiebreak, therefore, the two combatants went back and fourth before one of them won by two.

To put the tennis match in perspective, John Isner’s 1^st round win at the 2010 Wimbledon tournament was way longer but that was also historic. That game was the longest match in Tennis history. The final score in the 5^th set was 70-68. That game was also played over a span of two days.

Despite Raonic’s game not being quite as long as Isner’s, yesterday’s game was the longest in Olympic history. Keep in mind; the Olympic Tennis tournment only plays a best of 3 matches while the four Grand-Slam Tennis tournaments play a best of 5.

At the age of 21, Milos Raonic has a lot of good things going for him. He’s young, has an awesome serve and arguably is the best men’s singles player to ever come from Canada.  Raonic will be able to learn a lot from this match and most importantly will make him stronger.  I’m not a big Tennis fan but in the games that I’ve watched in the French Open and Wimbledon, he had a tougher time in the fourth and fifth sets as I could see that he was getting tired.

The same was true in today’s game. The only thing that helped him was a two hour rain delay after the second set. When play resumed and the third set got underway, I could tell that Raonic was just holding on. He had fought off a couple of match points earlier in the third set to keep him in the game.

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France,will now move on and play Feliciano López of Spain. Raonic would have had a good chance to win that match and advance to the Quarterfinals.