A top seed at an ATP World Tour Masters 1000 event for the first time, Andy Murray did well to reach the final of the Western & Southern Open before falling to Marin Cilic. The Brit saw his career-best 22-match win streak snapped by the inspired Croatian, but took positives from his deep run in Cincinnati.

“I’m very proud of this week. Obviously today didn’t go the way I would’ve wanted, but I certainly didn’t expect to get to the final,” said Murray, who arrived in Cincinnati after winning his second consecutive Olympic gold medal. “It was a very positive week. Now I’m looking forward to a few days’ rest.”

The short turnaround after Rio caused Murray some physical discomfort and nearly derailed his Cincinnati run.

“After the first match I played, I was having problems with my shoulder,” Murray said. “I did speak about it with my team, but my physio was pretty confident that it was just fatigue, and that I didn’t have any sort of structural damage in my shoulder.

“When it was said that I wasn’t going to make it worse by playing, I thought: ‘Let’s go for it this week. Let’s try and get through as many matches as we can.’”

Murray’s superior form carried him to a seventh consecutive final and nearly allowed him to win his fifth title of the year. In 2016, Murray won the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 event in Rome and the Aegon Championships before securing his second Wimbledon title. Against Cilic, he was aiming for his 40^th tour-level crown.

“I think I’m playing my best tennis just now. It’s not even close to anything else I had done before. Seven finals in a row, winning Wimbledon again, and the Olympics. It’s been really good,” said Murray, whose next event will be the US Open, a tournament he won in 2012. “I really didn’t expect to be here. It’s obviously disappointing when you get to the final and not win, but it was a very, very positive week considering everything. Mentally I’m in a good place just now. So I’m looking forward to New York for sure.”

Marin knew. Andy knew. The crowd even knew, but there was nothing anybody could do to stop Marin Cilic’s wide sliding serve in the deuce court from carving up Andy Murray in the final of the Western and Southern Open on Sunday.

Cilic won 6-4, 7-5, overwhelming Murray with precision serves, power forehands, and a tenacity to keep points short and sweet against the most in-form player on the planet.

Tennis is a game of primary and secondary patterns that are mixed based on the scoreboard and the guessing game of shot location constantly going on inside players’ minds. Primary patterns are the prime movers, run seven or eight times out of ten, while secondary patterns are surprise guerrilla tactics used to confuse the opponent when they get a scent of what’s really happening to them.

Cilic Deuce Court Wide Slider
There was no pattern of play more important for Cilic against Murray than his wide sliding serve in the deuce court. It stretched Murray way off the court to begin the point, creating a huge positioning hole for Cilic to immediately exploit with his forehand.

Murray regularly made contact with his forehand return 6.6 metres (22 feet) from the center of the court, creating an instant hole for Cilic to attack Murray in the vacant ad court, and also behind Murray in the deuce court as the Brit sprinted back hard after the defensive return to stay alive in the point.

Overall, Cilic directed 80 per cent (24/30) of first serves in the deuce court out wide, dining there again and again whenever he needed a point. Of the 24 first serves he hit out wide, he made 15 and won 12.

Of the 12 he won, he served and volleyed four times, highlighting the confidence he had in this specific serve to immediately follow it to the net. Of the other eight points, Murray committed three return errors and Cilic was 5/5 in hitting a forehand as the all-important “Serve +1” groundstroke immediately following the serve. Of those 12, Cilic only played one rally that lasted more than seven shots, showing how much he was able to immediately dictate behind the fearsome delivery. Of the three points Cilic lost behind his wide deuce slider, Murray was on full defence, slicing six of eight shots to barely stay afloat in the point.

At 6-4, 3-3, Murray’s average return speed against Cilic’s first serve was a lowly 48mph. The wide slider in the deuce court had a lot to do with that. Cilic, by comparison, was averaging 64mph with his first serve returns.

Cilic Serve +1 Forehands
Hitting a forehand as the first shot after the serve was also a key tactic for Cilic, completing it 61 per cent (22/36) of the time to stay on top of Murray as the point unfolded. Cilic won 73 per cent (16/22) of his points beginning with a Serve +1 forehand and only 43 per cent (6/14) beginning with a Serve +1 backhand strategy.   

With Cilic leading 6-4, 3-4 on serve, his forehand had done a masterful job of pushing Murray further back behind the baseline than the Brit was comfortable with. When Murray defeated Milos Raonic in the semi-finals, Murray made contact with only 16 per cent of his groundstrokes more than two metres behind the baseline, but that more than doubled that to 35 per cent against Cilic after a set and a half of play.

First Four Shots
Cilic imposed his will all over the court, especially when it came to the key metric of rally length. Sixty percent of points in the match were a maximum of four shots. Cilic won this vital battleground 39-34, won the 5-8 shot rallies 22-19 and lost the long rallies of 10 shots or more 5-4.

Dominating the shorter rallies is proven to be a much better indicator of who will win the match than winning the longer rallies. At the 2015 US Open, the match winner won 90 per cent of the 0-4 shot rallies, 66 per cent of the 5-8 shot rallies, and just 56 per cent of the longer rallies that reached double digits.

Cilic looks in ominous form heading into this year’s US Open – a title he won in 2014. When the 6’6” Croatian is in this vein of form, his game is so big and so powerful that he can blow right through opponents with his massive serve and forehand combination.

American Bjorn Fratangelo beat Evgeny Donskoy 3-6, 6-4, 6-2 to advance to the second round at the Winston-Salem Open on Sunday. The 23-year-old wild card fired eight aces and capitalised on five of his 11 break point chances in the one-hour, 51-minute victory.

“I felt more and more comfortable as the match went on,” said Fratangelo, who will next face No. 11 seed Paolo Lorenzi. “I prepared correctly, it was just tough.” 

Top seed Richard Gasquet will begin his campaign on Monday against Daniel Evans, who advanced with a 6-3, 7-6(3) win over Gastao Elias. Jan-Lennard Struff topped Andreas Seppi 6-2, 6-3 in 64 minutes to set a second-round meeting with No. 16 seed Pablo Carreno Busta.

Yen-Hsun Lu topped Illya Marchenko 7-6(5), 6-3, while Stephane Robert beat fellow Frenchman Paul-Henri Mathieu 4-6, 6-2, 6-2.

Yoshihito Nishioka, Radu Albot, James McGee and James Duckworth advanced to the main draw after winning their final round matches in qualifying over Liam Broady, Tim Van Rijthoven, Michael Berrer and Petros Chrysochos, respectively.

Winston-Salem is the final ATP World Tour event of the U.S. summer, welcoming 48 players to the Wake Forest campus in North Carolina. Top seed Gasquet is making is tournament debut. Kevin Anderson, the fifth seed, returns to defend his title.

Marin Cilic turned in a powerful performance in Sunday’s final at the Western & Southern Open, defying fatigue for his maiden ATP World Tour Masters 1000 crown.

Cilic stunned top seed and two-time Cincinnati champion Andy Murray 6-4, 7-5 in one hour and 34 minutes, pestering the Scot with a relentless barrage of formidable first serves and forehands. The Croatian has found immediate success with new coach Jonas Bjorkman, notching his 15th tour-level title in total.

It was just the fifth title by a player outside of the Big Four of Murray, Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal since 2010 (54 of 59). In addition, Cilic joins the foursome and Stan Wawrinka as the only active players to win both a Grand Slam and a Masters 1000 title, having lifted the trophy at the US Open two years ago.

“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. I felt that I played really good tennis today. The serve was a big factor in my game. I was hitting a lot of big serves in important points, and I was definitely very mentally strong in that second set. Andy was starting to play a bit better, but it’s definitely a huge win against him. He’s been on a great run the past couple of months.” 

Non-Big Four Masters 1000 Titlists (since April 2010)

Cilic executed his gameplan brilliantly in relentlessly attacking off the ground and continuing the trend of first serve dominance. He leaves the tournament with a staggering 85 per cent first serve points won. The 27 year old raced to a two-break lead in the first set and would eventually close out the opener after 41 minutes. Neither player flinched through the first 10 games of the second set, but it was Cilic who capitalised on a fifth break point for the decisive 6-5 lead. He closed out the title on his first match point.

Less than 15 hours removed from the 1:35am finish against Dimitrov, Cilic showed little signs of fatigue. Murray, meanwhile, was contesting his 11th match in 15 days after capturing the gold medal at the Rio Olympics. He was bidding for a 40th tour-level crown and 13th at the Masters 1000 level.

Previously the Cincinnati champion in 2008 & ’11, having defeated Novak Djokovic in both finals, Murray was looking to join Andre Agassi, Roger Federer, Pete Sampras and Mats Wilander as the only players to lift the trophy at least three times in the Open Era. The Dunblane native saw his 22-match win streak snapped, also suffering his first final defeat to an opponent not named Novak Djokovic since 2012.

Cilic, who takes home $834,700 in prize money, soars back into the Top 10 of the Emirates ATP Rankings to a projected World No. 9. He claimed multiple Top 10 wins in a tournament for the first time since his major title run in New York, having also downed Tomas Berdych. Cilic’s run to the title is even more impressive considering he was 0-8 in Masters 1000 quarter-finals entering the week.

Murray saw his lead in their FedEx ATP Head2Head series trimmed to 11-3. The Scot rallied to claim their lone previous final encounter at the 2013 Aegon Championships at Queen’s Club. He earns 600 Emirates ATP Rankings points and $409,270 in prize money.

“I’m very proud of this week,” said Murray. “Obviously today it didn’t go how I would’ve wanted. But I certainly didn’t expect to get to the final when I arrived here. I had some pretty good wins along the way. Today there were tough, tricky conditions with the wind.

“I think if I got off to a better start maybe could have done a bit better. I had a break point in his first service game and Love-30 in his next service game. I was pretty much behind from that point on and it was tough. But it’s a very, very positive week. I’m looking forward to a few days’ rest now.”