Points won by set: | 28-29, 37-28 |
Points won directly behind the serve:
32 % Cilic – 19 of 58
31 % Murray – 20 of 64
Even though Cilic [14] is a Grand Slam champion, prior to Cincy ’16 he hadn’t reached a Masters 1000 semifinal (eight quarterfinal defeats)! Murray [2] started strongly, but Cilic fought off a break point in the 2nd game with a forehand winner to build a *5:2 advantage. The first ten games of the 2nd set were easily held, then at 5-all the Croat needed five break points to break Murray’s serve and won another game on serve at ‘love’ playing his best backhand of the day on his first match point. Murray’s first defeat after career-best 22-match winning streak, he leads 11-3 in H2H vs Cilic. “I thought I was going to have a good chance if I played well,” said Cilic, who finished his semi-final against Grigor Dimitrov at 1:35am. “I didn’t feel too tired yesterday in the evening. It was obviously very difficult mentally. It was very humid on the court. We were sweating a lot, so a lot of up and downs, especially in the third set. I had to work out the positive and negative emotions and that took a bit of energy. But I went to sleep around 4:00 and woke up a little bit before 11:00. That was enough to recover.” The final kicked off at 16:00 local time. One week ago during the Olympic games, Cilic (lost in the third round to Monfils) stopped working with Goran Ivanisevic and hired Jonas Bjorkman as his new coach.
Cilic’s route to his 15th title (his first Masters 1K):
1 Viktor Troicki 6-3, 6-4
2 Fernando Verdasco 6-3, 6-1
3 Tomas Berdych 6-3, 4-6, 6-4
Q Borna Coric 6-2 ret.
S Grigor Dimitrov 4-6, 6-3, 7-5
W Andy Murray 6-4, 7-5
