“After coming from Rio and after the marathon that I had in Rio, it’s very important victory for me”.
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“I played a good match against a tough opponent in the first round for sure”, Nadal said. “I’m glad I don’t have to wait round until 11:00 to get on the court”.
“Now I’m looking forward to a few days’ rest”.
Andy Murray notched up his 21st and 22nd consecutive victories to reach the finals of the Cincinnati Masters. He owns four titles this year and has defeated Raonic five times since January.
Despite hitting an ace, Raonic hit another double fault to hand Murray two break points, but the match was suspended due rain.
Eighth seed Dominic Thiem won his first match since late June at Wimbledon, defeating Australian John Millman 7-5, 6-1.
If he were to win the title for a third time he could trail Djokovic by a scant 815 points.
Czech fifth seed Karolina Pliskova advanced over Russian seventh seed Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-3, 4-6, 6-2 and next plays fourth seed Garbine Muguruza, the French Open champion who beat Hungarian Timea Babos 6-4, 6-3. Cilic said: “This week has been unbelievable for me”.
“If it happens, it will be fantastic”.
The Spaniard rallied at the end before a relieved Coric closed it out on his second match point with a backhand victor. He recovered from the loss of a first set to win 2-6 6-3 6-4, setting up a clash with Grigor Dimitrov.
So, it’s advantage Murray on that score and also in the career series against Cilic, who has beaten Murray only twice in their 13 senior level matches.
“I was serving really well with one racquet, so I stayed with it the entire match, and was switching on my return games to see if I could improve there”. I think he made maybe more mistakes than usual because of that.
“I need matches like that”, said Dimitrov.
He will take on the Scot once again in the semi-finals of the Cincinnati Masters on Saturday and hopes for a better outcome than in south-west London.
There will certainly be plenty of reasons to watch as Murray is playing for his 23rd straight win and to close the gap on Novak Djokovic while Kerber will be playing to take over the number one ranking on the WTA.
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In the end, Murray will be too much for Cilic to handle.
