Milos Raonic was supposed to begin his 2024 campaign at the Hong Kong Open, but he abandoned that recently.
It's one of those ATP 250 events that was added to this year's calendar, and Milos Raonic wanted to play there. He requested a wild card into the event because he didn't want to burn his protected ranking for an ATP 250 event, which makes total sense.
Unfortunately for Raonic, he didn't get the wild card from the event, so he decided against playing in Hong Kong. The plan is actually to travel directly to Melbourne, where he'll take part in the Kooyong Classic exhibition. He spoke about it recently in the Match Point Canada podcast.
I'll go straight down to Melbourne. I was hoping to play actually in Hong Kong, and I just made kind of a rational decision. I requested at the event, a wild card, I didn't want to use one of my protected spots for a 250.
Ultimately that didn't work out. So I decided to not play Hong Kong. I'll play actually Kooyong to get a few matches in that way I don't use up my protected slots for 250 and then get ready to play Melbourne.
The Kooyong exhibition generally features some pretty big names, so Raonic will get a good warm-up there. One thing that's going to work in his favor is his ability to really ramp it up quickly.
He's never been a player that really needed a couple of weeks to get ready, but one or two matches are going to be enough.
Luckily for me, I've always been actually pretty good at playing without too many prep matches. So the most important thing for me was over these last few months to get in some good training and put in some good time in the gym and on court and really be able to go full out there.
He last played in the Davis Cup for Canada and looked pretty good so more weeks of practice should help him. It's all in the physicals for him. If he's healthy, he should have some things to say.
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