Shunning the effects of jet lag, he beat Juan Monaco, Kevin Anderson, Bernard Tomic and Milos Raonic without too much trouble to set up a final showdown with Marin Cilic on Sunday.
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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.
The Scot will play either Croatia’s Marin Cilic or Grigor Dimitrov – the latter is unseeded here – in Sunday’s final.
The match is to be Cilic’s first Masters 1000 final on his 71st attempt. This remarkable run of form has seen him claim the Queens, Wimbledon and Olympic titles in the space of two months. He owns four titles in 2016 and has defeated Raonic five times since January.
Murray broke Raonic in an opening game interrupted for 15 minutes by rain, with the fourth seed contributing two double faults which set the tone for the contest. Murray has now won his last 10 sets and still hasn’t lost a singles match since losing the French Open Final.
Seemingly set to go to a tie-break, Dimitrov was controversially broken a third time in the 11th game, with crowd disturbance during the rally affecting the Bulgarian’s concentration on break point.
Murray said: “I’m very proud of what I’ve done this week”.
Pliskova has upset Spanish World No.3 Garbine Muguruza 6-1, 6-3 in the semi-finals on Saturday.
Williams has led the WTA rankings for 183 consecutive weeks, the second-longest such stretch.
“Mentally I’m in a good place just now”. I felt that I played really good tennis today.
Hopefully this wouldn’t be a match that we would see until the finals in NY, but it is certainly a possibility that this would be a Round of 16, quarterfinal, or even potential final.
Three-time Grand Slam champion Murray won the Cincinnati tournament in 2008 and 2011, while Cilic is making his first appearance in the final.
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“Maybe it appeared that he was being more aggressive, but I felt like he made more mistakes because he was trying to be more aggressive than usual”. The consistency of the Brit persisted as he scored another hold to love, proving that he wasn’t slowing down, but his opponent was using his serve to avoid facing any break points. “There was not one thing what I would change in this match”.
