Freshly crowned Olympic gold medalist Andy Murray on Saturday defeated Canadian No. 1 Milos Raonic 6-3, 6-3 to book a spot in the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati, where he is to face Marin Cilic.
Murray has had to overcome fatigue associated with the quick turnaround from the Rio Games gold medal match, while Cilic was to have less than 12 hours of rest before taking to the court for yesterday’s final.
That was due to his 4-6, 6-3, 7-5 semi-final victory over Grigor Dimitrov being delayed two hours by rain and did not finish until 1:20am yesterday.
Photo: Aaron Doster, USA TODAY
The match is to be Cilic’s first Masters 1000 final on his 71st attempt.
“I was twice a break down in the third set, I didn’t play good tennis today. It was not easy to play but I managed to win,” he said.
Murray said he is also feeling the effects of playing a lot of tennis in a short period of time.
“It’s better for me to be finished now, but I’m not going to be fresher than Marin or Grigor,” said Murray, who has won 50 matches this season. “I’ve played a lot of tennis. This week has been hard for me coming from Rio.”
“Because I’ve won a lot the last few months, keeping the matches shorter is something that has been good, especially this week for sure,” he said. “I’m in another final now. Go I’ll go out there and give it a good go tomorrow and get a few days break before getting ready for New York.”
Murray was to play in his seventh straight final after winning his 22nd consecutive match. He owns four titles this year and has defeated Raonic five times since January.
Murray broke in an opening game interrupted for 15 minutes by raindrops, with Raonic contributing two double-faults.
Murray won his eighth match in 11 meetings with Raonic as the pair played a rerun of last month’s Wimbledon final won by the Scot.
Murray is mounting a strong bid to displace Novak Djokovic from the No. 1 ranking.
If he wins the title for a third time, he could trail Djokovic by a scant 815 points.
In the women’s singles, Angelique Kerber on Saturday reached the final, leaving her one win away from unseating Serena Williams at No. 1.
Kerber took control after a 33-minute rain delay in the first set and beat Simona Halep 6-3, 6-4 in humid, windy conditions, putting her within reach of the world’s top ranking.
Williams has led the WTA rankings for 183 consecutive weeks, the second-longest such stretch.
A win yesterday over 15th-seeded Karolina Pliskova would move Kerber to the top spot in next week’s rankings.
Williams dropped out at the start of the tournament because of an inflamed shoulder, leaving her ranking vulnerable.
Kerber has tried to avoid thinking about No. 1, because she did not want to put any more pressure on herself. Now, there is no avoiding it.
“I’ve had a lot of ups and downs the last few years and a lot of experiences from which I’ve learned,” Kerber said. “I think I’m one of the best tennis players.
“One match away, still a long way to go,” she added.
It would be Kerber’s first title in Cincinnati — she lost her other finals appearance in 2012.
Halep was on a hot streak, winning back-to-back titles at Bucharest and Montreal. She had also beaten Kerber in their four matches on hard courts this season, although Kerber won at Wimbledon.
Kerber led 4-3 in the first set when rain forced the delay. She won eight of the next nine points to take the first set, then pulled ahead 4-0 in the second set, pumping her right arm in celebration as the games piled up.
Pliskova advanced to the championship match for the first time by beating Garbine Muguruza 6-1, 6-3 in an earlier match. She was well aware of the stakes.
“I know it,” she said before Kerber’s match. “For me, doesn’t really mean anything. For her, yes. I don’t know if she would be a little bit stressed or something, but I would love to have her as a No. 1 after a few years, but I’ll do anything for her not to get there, if she wins [in the semi-finals].”
In women’s doubles, the former No. 1 doubles pair of Martina Hingis and Sania Mirza, who split earlier this season, were yesterday to face off for the trophy.
Switzerland’s Hingis and new US partner Coco Vandeweghe booked their spot with a 6-1, 6-4 win over fifth-seeded German Julia Goerges and singles finalist Karolina Pliskova, while seventh-seeded Mirza of India teamed with the Czech Republic’s Barbora Strycova for a 6-2, 7-5 win over second-seeded Taiwanese sisters Chan Hao-ching and Chan Yung-jan.
Hingis, who combined with Timea Bacsinszky to win silver in the Rio doubles for Switzerland after losing in the final to Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina of Russia, split with India’s top sportswoman after a Toronto quarter-final loss late last month.
Although the pair are no longer together, they will still play the year-end WTA event in Singapore in October for which they qualified.
The team started out last year and won their first three tournaments before capturing last year’s Wimbledon and US Open titles, as well as this year’s Australian Open. They achieved 11 WTA titles together.
A 41-match win streak ended in Qatar this year, and they lost in the fourth round at Roland Garros and Wimbledon quarter-finals.
Hingis and Vandeweghe actually took to the court together for the first time on Saturday after two walkovers this week at the rain-plagued Cincinnati tournament.
Mirza and Strycova have won all four of their matches in straight sets.
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