Novak Djokovic v Marin Cilic: ATP World Tour Finals – as it happened
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Version 0 of 1. 9.20pm GMT21:20 Well that’s all from me. I’ll be back tomorrow for Federer v Nishikori (2pm) and Murray v Raonic (8pm). Til then, bye! 9.16pm GMT21:16 What a terribly disappointing performance that was from Cilic, but Djokovic looked ominously good. Anyway, this is what he had to say about it. It’s been a great match. It’s great to be back. Thank you all for coming and enjoying the match. It was a great performance. Obviously Marin has a lot of confidence, is a great quality player, but I managed to neutralise his serve, get the ball back into play and that was the tactic. How, he is asked, will he spend his day off tomorrow? I try to spend as much time outdoors as possible. Obviously at this time of year london is a little bit cold. I try to spend a little bit of time in the park with my dog who is here. Unfortunately my family is not here. I’m not going to the pub if that’s what you meant. I’m staying at home and preparing for the next match. 9.11pm GMT21:11 At 56 minutes and 42 seconds, that was a full minute and 34 seconds shorter than Wawrinka’s similar smashing of Berdych this afternoon. 9.10pm GMT21:10 Djokovic wins in straight sets! Very straight sets. Totally, rigidly straight Second set: Cilic 1-6, 1-5 Djokovic* (*denotes player who just served) At one point Djokovic hits a very poor drop shot, Cilic jogs forward and, with an entire court to aim at and the Serb already preparing for his next serve, slaps the ball into the net. A few moments later Cilic is facing three match points, and promptly sends his service return into the bottom of the net. 9.08pm GMT21:08 Second set: Cilic* 1-6, 1-5 Djokovic (*denotes player who just served) Djokovic breaks again, the game eventually surrendered with the most rank of forehands, half-heartedly pulled way wide, and now Djokovic is serving for the match. 9.04pm GMT21:04 Second set: Cilic 1-6, 1-4 Djokovic* (*denotes player who just served) Worst comes to the worst, we at least know that, if only for a few brief but glorious moments, these two players produced the kind of tennis we were all hoping for. It’s all gone wrong (again) for Cilic, though, who loses this particular game to love and might as well have been sitting in his chair, sipping coffee. Updated at 9.07pm GMT 9.02pm GMT21:02 Second set: Cilic* 1-6, 1-3 Djokovic (*denotes player who just served) It appears that Cilic has performed something of a U-turn. An ace and a service winner put him in a commanding position in the game. This, in turn, forces Djokovic to up his game, and as a result these were without doubt the finest few minutes of the match thus far. First serves are landed, winners struck, break points earned and saved, and for a few happy moments this is the high-quality ding-dong encounter we had all yearned for. There’s also the world’s most useless attempted forehand drop shot from Cilic at deuce, which lands about six feet short of the net, and then he eventually yields to all sorts of pressure to surrender the following point, and for a fourth successive service game, he’s broken 8.54pm GMT20:54 Second set: Cilic 1-6, 1-2 Djokovic* (*denotes player who just served) At which Djokovic starts to think about what he’s going to have for his tea and finds himself 0-30 down before he’s stopped daydreaming. Inspired by this turn of events, Cilic hits a proper winner, a great, big, flat crosscourt forehand, to bring up three break points. And then another one, another forehand that dips just in time to win the first of them. Djokovic’s eight-game winning run is over, and Cilic breaks back to love. 8.51pm GMT20:51 Second set: Cilic* 1-6, 0-2 Djokovic (*denotes player who just served) Cilic opens proceedings with a double fault, but it improves somewhat from there, with probably the two finest points of the match. The first of them is won, eventually, by the server, finally winning a point at the net. The second is taken by Djokovic, after a physics-defying crosscourt forehand that has the crowd cooing with astonishment and pleasure, and it seems that he has destroyed Cilic by occasionally reeling off shots like that, leaving his opponents believing he has to perform the impossible if he’s to win a point. Anyway, another break. Updated at 9.02pm GMT 8.46pm GMT20:46 Second set: Cilic 1-6, 0-1 Djokovic* (*denotes player who just served) Cilic is all over the place here. Djokovic is playing high-quality, low-stakes tennis, just giving his opponent enough rope to hang himself. But this Cilic is not the man who we saw at the US Open. He needs to rediscover his service game, sharpish. Updated at 8.55pm GMT 8.42pm GMT20:42 Djokovic wins the first set 6-1 First set: Cilic* 1-6 Djokovic (*denotes player who just served) A couple of mistakes creep into Djokovic’s game here, but Cilic needs more than a couple. He needs loads. He need mistakes by the lorryload. Highlight of the game is a nicely disguised drop shot that leaves Cilic (more) flat-footed (than usual). Djokovic wins his second break point of the game by casually guiding a serve into his body across court, and Cilic just watches it go by. Is he saving himself for set two, though, or does he actually want to be back in the dressing-room in time for the Walking Dead? Updated at 8.42pm GMT 8.37pm GMT20:37 First set: Cilic 1-5 Djokovic* (*denotes player who just served) I know what you were thinking. You were thinking, ‘At what point does Cilic just throw in the towel for this set and save himself for the second.’ And the answer to that would be, at 4-1 and two breaks down. Djokovic holds to love, in no time at all. 8.34pm GMT20:34 First set: Cilic* 1-4 Djokovic (*denotes player who just served) There’s a wildly impressive on-the-run forehand crosscourt passing shot from Djokovic here – aided by Cilic feeling the point was probably won so he might as well not really bother going to the net when he could just as easily stand in the middle of court like a great big doofus – as the Serb storms to 0-40, at which point he reels off another great on-the-run forehand crosscourt passing shot. Two breaks up now, and Cilic’s first-serve percentage of 35 isn’t cutting a great amount of mustard. Updated at 9.12pm GMT 8.31pm GMT20:31 First set: Cilic 1-3 Djokovic* (*denotes player who just served) Sky inform us that Djokovic will “instinctively look to follow that [break] up emphatically”. I’m certain he would want to follow it up emphatically, but I’m not sure that instinct comes into it. Anyway, he does follow it up emphatically enough, holding to 30, and the dropped points were the results of a) a double fault and b) a net cord. Cilic’s body language is not wildly encouraging, and neither is the straightforward, elbow-high forehand volley he slams a yard wide. 8.26pm GMT20:26 First set: Cilic* 1-2 Djokovic (*denotes player who just served) Cilic comes into the net, a pretty bad idea when your approach shot is as poor as his was, and next thing he knows he’s 0-30 down. He battles back from there to 30-30 but then surrenders the next couple of points – the last of them the result of a horribly poor shot, going down the line when Djokovic had slipped and was stranded on the other side of the court but landing the ball a foot wide – and that’s the first service break. 8.21pm GMT20:21 First set: Cilic 1-1 Djokovic* (*denotes player who just served) When I said the warm-up was over, I was perhaps a little premature. Djokovic still seems to have a little bit of work to do, and gift-wraps several points for Cilic, but thanks to a few excellent serves, (all of the best ones wide to Cilic’s forehand, though there was also a ludicrously wild one), he pulls through. The lowlight of the game was a straightforward overhead thudded into the net by Djokovic, of the kind that would have a 10-year-old’s coach fuming and roaring. Updated at 8.21pm GMT 8.16pm GMT20:16 First set: Cilic* 1-0 Djokovic (*denotes player who just served) That’s the opening game Cilic would have been hoping for, or at least a pretty decent approximation of it. Only one first serve landed, but Djokovic made a few unforced errors and it’s won to love. 8.13pm GMT20:13 The warm-up is over. Deep breath now. 8.06pm GMT20:06 Cilic has won the toss and chosen to serve. 8.04pm GMT20:04 The players have both been introduced, strolled out hand-in-hand with blue-ball-clutching mascot-types and are now stripping off and unsheathing rackets, ready for action. Updated at 8.43pm GMT 8.01pm GMT20:01 Finally, a micro-interview with Novak Djokovic. The players are now hanging out in the rather ordinary-looking bowels of the O2 Arena, next to a decorative bay tree, waiting to be introduced to the crowd. It feels great to be here. It’s one of the best venues for World Tour Finals. I’m excited. I’m looking forward to competing. Obviously in the last couple of months he’s playing the tennis of his life. He won his first Grand Slam. He’s motivated to play every match like it’s his last. It’s going to be tough but I look forward to it.” 7.59pm GMT19:59 And now Cilic himself is doing some chatting. “I’m very excited. The year has been very well for me. I’ve played good tennis in the last couple of months and this is an opportunity to end the season in a good way. In Wimbledon it was pretty tight. That match helped me for the rest of the season to play a little bit better. In that match I feel I played the right way and I’m going to try to do that again today. 7.56pm GMT19:56 Marin Cilic’s coach, a certain Goran Ivanisevic, has been chatting about his charge’s chances: Right now everything is OK. He deserves to be here. For me it’s best that he plays Djokovic first match because for me Djokovic is the favourite here. First match it’s best to play against the best guy here. I told him every set is important here because even if you lose two matches you can still qualify. Every game is important. You just have to think positive, keep going. He has a bad record against Novak but one day he has to beat him. He has to be aggressive. Last three times he’s getting closer and closer, but he has to be very aggressive, he has to serve well and just go for it. 7.51pm GMT19:51 For those just waking up from an afternoon nap, in the first match of this group Stan Wawrinka gave Tomas Berdych a 6-1, 6-1-shaped, 58-minute hiding, in which he won a mildly intimidating 95% of points on his first serve. 7.32pm GMT19:32 Hello world! So here we go, then, for the second game in the ATP World Tour Finals’ Group A and the 11th instalment in one of the least closely-fought head-to-heads in top-tier tennis. Cilic has had 10 tilts at Djokovic and has won a total of five sets – three-fifths of them on tie breaks – while surrendering 25, and all 10 matches. On the plus side, this year’s US Open champion has been getting closer: having taken a set off Djokovic in their second meeting, back in 2008, he lost the next five in straight sets before extending the Serb to three (out of three), four and then five in their last three meetings, all of them this year. Djokovic said after the last of those matches, a not-entirely-gruelling five-setter in the Wimbledon quarter-finals (his three sets were won 6-1, 6-2, 6-2, with Cilic wresting the second and third 3-6 and 6-7), that he had “played a very bad game” which “was frustrating for me”. And he still won. So the bookmakers have Djokovic at between 2-17 and 1-9 to win tonight, with Cilic hovering around the 5-1 mark. A victory for the 6ft 6in 26-year-old would be a considerable surprise, but, well, you never know. Fans of round numbers may like to know that Djokovic has won a total of 600 matches in his career so far, and lost 140. One of those figures will be looking a little less pleasingly divisible-by-10 before the night’s out. |