Marin Cilic fought through to the Rotterdam World Tennis quarter-finals with a 7-6 (7/2), 7-6 (9/7) defeat of Luxembourg veteran Gilles Muller on Wednesday.
Victory in the two-hour meeting sent the second-seeded Croatian into a last-eight battle with Germany’s Philipp Kohlschreiber, a winner over Ivan Dodig of Croatia 6-4, 6-2.
Cilic, the 2014 US Open champion, was out-aced by the 40th-ranked Muller, nine to eight in a match without a single break of serve.
Photo: EPA
A pair of French seeds claimed wins, with No. 3 Gilles Simon sending the last Dutchman home with his 7-6 (7/5), 6-1 defeat of Robin Haase, who lost a 4-1 lead in the opening set.
“To be honest, Robin deserved to win the first set,” Simon said. “I survived with some luck. I was warned because the matches against Robin are always tough.”
Simon will play for a quarter-final place against German teenager Alexander Zverev, who beat Canadian Vasek Pospisil 7-5, 6-2.
Gael Monfils, the No. 5, beat Croatian teen Borna Coric 6-3, 5-7, 6-2, with the Frenchman saving 10 of 13 break points.
Cilic was runner-up at the Ahoy Stadium two years ago and with the injury pullout of French top seed Richard Gasquet is now considered a top title favorite at the event, which was to have also featured Roger Federer, now recovering from last week’s minor knee surgery.
The winner of 14 titles, Cilic said his level has been improving after playing and winning a pair of tough matches this week.
“I played better today than the first day,” the world No. 13 said. “This was a very close match — two tiebreakers and no breaks.”
“In the second, I was returning better and got into his service game, but I had to stay mentally concentrated. I was also lucky in the tiebreakers,” Cilic said.
The Croatian faces Kohlschreiber for the ninth time, having lost five previous meetings to the 32nd-ranked German.
“If you can have a couple of tough matches and get through them, you start to play better,” Cilic said. “I’ve adjusted to the tight situations. I’m always glad to win matches like this.”
MEMPHIS OPEN
AP, MEMPHIS, Tennessee
Top-seeded Kei Nishikori opened his bid for a fourth straight Memphis Open title with a 6-2, 7-5 victory over American Ryan Harrison on Wednesday night.
Nishikori was cruising through the second set up a break at 5-3. Harrison held serve, then broke the Japanese player in the lengthy 10th game. The American saved four match points before Nishikori hit a backhand into the net, giving Harrison his break and tying the set at 5-all.
Nishikori, the world’s seventh-ranked player, broke back in the next game and then served out the match to move to the third round, where he will face Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Kukushkin, who upset fifth-seeded Denis Kudla 6-1, 7-5 earlier on Wednesday.
“I think he [Harrison] started playing a little better that game,” Nishikori said about the 10th game. “I kind of had a double fault [up 40-30], something, easy mistakes. I should’ve closed out, but happy to finish the last two games.”
Throughout the match, Nishikori countered Harrison’s strong serve with a strategy of running Harrison from side-to-side along the baseline with an occasional drop-shot to keep the American off balance. Harrison has only won once in 25 matches against the world’s top 10 players.
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
The US’ Ilia Malinin on Saturday produced six scintillating quadruple jumps, including a quadruple Axel, in the men’s free skate to capture his first figure skating world title. The 19-year-old nicknamed the “Quad god,” who is the only skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition, dazzled with an array of breathtakingly executed jumps starting with his quad Axel and including a quadruple Lutz in combination with a triple flip and a quadruple toe loop in combination with a triple toe. He added an unexpected triple-triple combination at the end to earn a world-record 227.79 in the free program for a championship
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