Andy Murray saw his 22-match unbeaten run ended as he suffered a straight-sets loss to Marin Cilic in the Western and Southern Open final.
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‘I thought I was going to have a good chance if I played well, ‘ said Cilic, who finished his semi-final match against Grigor Dimitrov at 1:35am – I didn’t feel too exhausted yesterday in the evening.
Cilic then served it out to book his place against top seed and two-time champion Murray, who defeated Milos Raonic earlier. “It’s going to come down to a few important points, playing them better, and obviously executing better than I did on my end of things when it comes to my service games than I did today”.
“I really didn’t expect to be here” said Murray.
Murray showed signs of fatigue as world No14 Cilic completed a 6-4, 7-5 win over the Briton, who went straight from Rio into this tournament with minimal rest in between.
“This week was unbelievable for me”, said Cilic, who had never gotten as far as the semi-finals in a Masters series event.
Murray is mounting a strong bid to displace Novak Djokovic from the number one ranking.
“I had some pretty good wins along the way”.
A second set point happened after Murray got some help from the net, but this time, the Canadian couldn’t save it followed by a forehand unforced error. “That’s obviously a big sign for me for moving forward”. I’ve needed it to be because I haven’t been feeling flawless.
“There is still one match to go and I will not think yet about this”, Australian Open victor Kerber said after reaching her second final at the venue.
“I felt that I played really, really high quality tennis”. Murray regained one of the breaks but Cilic held to 15 in the tenth game to take the first set.
“I need to play to go through that process”, he continued.
“That’s how it felt to me”.
“I was pretty much behind from that point on and it was tough”.
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But Murray – the latest member of the “600 Club” having reached the ATP World Tour match-wins milestone against Anderson – could not be too downhearted.
