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Murray, Cilic in title clash
CINCINNATI: Sizzling hot Andy Murray roared into his seventh successive final with a commanding victory over Canadian Milos Raonic in Cincinnati on Saturday.
CINCINNATI: Sizzling hot Andy Murray roared into his seventh successive final with a commanding victory over Canadian Milos Raonic in Cincinnati on Saturday.
Olympic champion Murray, who beat Raonic in the Wimbledon final, notched his career-best 22nd consecutive win by blunting the fourth-seeded Canadian’s intimidating service game in a 6-3, 6-3 semi-final win.
Top seed Murray, gearing up for the US Open in nine days, the last grand slam of the year, will face 2014 US Open champion Marin Cilic of Croatia in the final.
Cilic overcame Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria 4-6, 6-3, 7-5 coming back twice from a break down in the third set.
Murray has won 11 of 13 matches against 12th seed Cilic.
“He served a couple of doubles that first game and I managed to get the break, and then had the momentum from there,” said Murray, who registered his fifth win against Raonic this season.
Two-times Cincinnati winner Murray broke Raonic again in the ninth game to close out the first set. The second set went on serve until the eighth game, when Raonic committed another double fault, elected not to volley a lob that fell well within the baseline and netted a forehand on break point, one of his 31 unforced errors.
Murray had a touch of trouble closing out the match as he mis-hit a couple of shots and a light drizzle held up play again for a few minutes before the Briton executed a splendid drop volley to end it on his third match point.
KERBER IN FINAL, ONE WIN FROM TOP SPOT
Australian Open champion Angelique Kerber cooled off red-hot Simona Halep in straight sets to reach the WTA final and move one win away from taking over as world No 1.
Kerber beat the Romanian, winner of 13 successive matches, 6-3, 6-4 to set up a Sunday final against Karolina Pliskova.
The German needs to beat Pliskova to end Serena Williams’ 183 successive weeks as world No 1.
The American is three weeks short of Steffi Graf’s all-time record, but the 28-year-old German can make her own history with a win on Sunday.
“I have still, one match to go,” said left-hander Kerber, fresh off winning the Olympic silver.
