It took two days and numerous scurryings back and forth from the locker room, but in terms of the tennis, it was a relatively untroubled victory for Andy Murray as he defeated Marin Cilic, 7-5, 6-2, 6-3, to progress to the Wimbledon quarterfinals.
With everybody weighing in on the scheduling of Britain’s No. 1 on the uncovered Court No. 1, Murray himself gave no sign of worrying about the assignment or indeed anything other than the opponent in front of him. Murray led the head-to-head 5-1 coming into the match, but that one loss came at the 2009 U.S. Open, also in the round of sixteen.
Cilic, who famously won the second-longest match ever played at Wimbledon on Saturday, was not at his sharpest, particularly on Monday when the match began. Although he broke Murray in his first service game, he handed the break back swiftly with forehand errors, presaging a match in which the Croatian’s biggest weapon would prove more dangerous to him than his opponent. The Wimbledon stat-keepers pegged Cilic’s unforced errors at 24 for the match, which goes beyond the realms of generosity into absurdity, but also underlines the fact that Murray was more masterful than we sometimes see from him.
After a long first set in which he was frequently pushed on serve, Murray stepped up and landed some big returns to break for the set. With the weather threatening, Murray continued to return excellently, and deployed tempting backhand slices to lure Cilic into another forehand error for the break. Leading 3-1 and 40-0, play was suspended due to weather and resumed at noon on Tuesday, when the players played a total of six points before a 40-minute break.
Under these conditions, it was imperative to keep one’s concentration and try to get off the court as soon as possible, and Murray came up trumps on both fronts. His serve was the biggest feature of Tuesday’s half of the match, in which the vast majority of his 16 aces came. The overnight break did not seem to have cleared Cilic’s head in terms of tactics; the Croatian seemed reluctant to hit out on his forehand for fear of missing, opting instead to try to mix up the pace and angles, a game at which Murray excels. Cilic desperately needed to be able to finish points off at the net, but his volleying was poor, and it didn’t help that Murray unerringly pegged the ball at his feet to make execution more difficult—and used his phenomenal foot speed to chase down anything less than perfect.
Murray took the second set on Cilic’s serve with a superb backhand return, then saved three break points with mammoth serves to lead 1-0. At 1-1, Cilic finally found a good play—using his backhand to attack Murray’s weak second serve, then coming in behind it—but couldn’t execute the volley. He gave a frustrated yell and was promptly broken for 1-3, and Murray cruised to victory from there. He will face Spain’s David Ferrer in the quarterfinals tomorrow.