Milos Raonic earns another shot at Roger Federer in Brisbane final

Raonic earlier won a battle of big servers to down local contender Bernard Tomic 7-6 (7-5), 7-6 (7-5) in the first semi.

Closing out the match with a booming first serve that Federer could only parry long, Raonic roared in triumph, having beaten the 17-times grand slam champion for only the second time in 11 encounters.

At last year’s final, too, Raonic had given Federer somewhat of a challenge, taking the Greatest of all Time to three closely-fought sets. Raonic was 20-for-25 at the net and although he had fewer aces than Federer, his 53 per cent success rate on his own second serve against one of the finest returners in the game was a fairly telling stat.

Federer has had a nasty flu bug since arriving in Brisbane last Sunday and requested a Thursday start from tournament organisers to give him as much time as possible time to get over it. “He’s been playing so well, I know he’s going to do great things this year”, Raonic said in a courtside interview.

Tomic will now shift his attention to the Sydney International, where he is the top seed and has a relatively smooth path to the semis, with his second-round opponent on Wednesday to be either young Australian wildcard Jordan Thompson or Slovakian Martin Klizan.

The Swiss tennis maestro took just 60 minutes to down the eighth-seeded Austrian 6-1, 6-4 and said afterwards that it was the best he had played all week.

As Federer has said himself this week, however, it’s not about how you start the tournament but how you finish it and he showed every sign of being ready to finish the tournament in style when he defeated Dominic Thiem 6-1, 6-4 in the semifinals to reach his third consecutive Brisbane International final.

Nadal advanced to his career 99th final after defeating Illya Marchenko of Ukraine 6-3, 6-4.

In the very next game it seemed as though the Swiss was set to capitalise, as he dug out his first break point of the match. It was the 1,000th victory of Federer’s career. He set up a quarterfinal against Lucas Pouille, who upset sixth-seeded David Goffin 7-6 (5), 4-6, 6-3.

Following a breakout year in 2014, the Canadian tumbled out of the top 10 with first round exits at the French Open and Wimbledon.

Azarenka ended American qualifier Crawford’s dream run with a 6-0 6-3 win to set up a decider with Germany’s Angelique Kerber, who also cruised through to the final with a 6-2 6-3 win over Spain’s Carla Suarez Navarro.

Tennis bad boy Nick Kyrgios was a walking PR disaster a year ago. “Looking back past year I was well beaten by Kei, but today I played very different”. It somehow boiled down to his better service, as Federer could muster only a break point which he failed to convert, as against Raonic’s two conversion from five chances.

“I just feel like I still have a bit of that match rustiness, not quite that sharpness where I had maybe at the end of the year when I play a lot”, she said.