Murray beats Raonic to play Cilic in final

Cilic’s two wins over Murray came in the 2014 Rotterdam Open and 2009 US Open.

OLYMPIC champion Andy Murray’s career-best unbeaten run ended on 22 matches last night when he went down 6-4 7-5 to Marin Cilic in the final of the Cincinnati Masters.

The second set went on serve until Murray served at 5-5 in a tumultuous game in which Cilic finally broke the world number two on his fifth break point when the top seed dumped a forehand into the net.

Marin Cilic escaped Grigor Dimitrov early Sunday morning in three sets winning 4-6, 6-3, 7-5.

Cilic has reached a first Masters 1000 final on his 71st attempt.

“This week was unbelievable for me”, said Cilic, who had never gotten as far as the semi-finals in a Masters series event.

“I’ve played a lot of tennis, the balls are also different here”, Murray said.

“When it was said that I wasn’t going to make it worse by playing, I thought, “Let’s go for it this week”.

“I served extremely well today and that helped me a lot. Go I’ll go out there and give it a good go tomorrow and get a few days break before getting ready for NY”.

For Murray, it could be suggested that perhaps it was a game too far, having played an average of more than one match a day over the previous fortnight. The Scot leads the series 8-4, beating Raonic four times in 2016 including the Wimbledon final.

Despite hitting an ace, Raonic hit another double fault to hand Murray two break points, but the match was suspended due rain.

In the men’s bracket of the Western & Southern Open Saturday, Andy Murray beat Milo Raonic 6-3, 6-3, also overcoming a brief rain delay in the first set.

Raonic has former world number one John McEnroe in his corner and admitted ahead of his latest showdown with Murray that he has taken on board a few words of wisdom from the American legend. Cilic has now reached a final for the third time this season and looks for his first title since the 2015 Kremlin Cup.

“There is still one match to go and I will not think yet about this”, Australian Open victor Kerber said after reaching her second final at the venue.

“If it happens, it will be awesome”.

“I was pretty much behind from that point on and it was tough”.

Kerber stands 4-2 over Pliskova. 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.