Marin Cilic outmuscles Marcel Granollers to claim the title – VEGETA Croatia Open Umag 2012
Croatian number one, Marin Cilic, delivered sheer delight to his home crowd in Umag by winning the final of VEGETA Croatia Open Umag on Sunday evening. The world number 15 formulated a thumping straight sets victory, 6-4, 6-2, against the 20th ranked Spaniard, Marcel Granollers, to lift his second ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) championship trophy of the running season.
26-year-old Granollers had outplayed the Croat contender last year on his home soil in Valencia and Cilic finally avenged his defeat from the Spaniard this time round to lead 5-1 in the all-time head-to-head series. Granollers was aiming to end his title drought of the season in Umag but his bleak game play wasn’t good enough to give some challenge to the second seeded opponent. He fought well in the opener but the following set all belonged to Cilic, who displayed amazing power hitting to drive Granollers out of the competition with commanding ease.
The Spaniard was off to a flyer in the opening set, breaking the second seeded Croat early and leading 4-2. However, a huge momentum shift was seen from that point and Cilic came out with all his guns blazing. He nailed two successive break points to get in the driving seat and served out of the set at 6-4 to get the upper hand.
The fourth seed again stung an early serve break in the following set but his bleak baseline defence allowed Cilic to nail three more break points. Granollers was literally outplayed by the pin-point hitting of the home favourite opponent and had no option but to submit in the second set of the match. With five cracking breaks of serve and 22 out of 32 first serve points in the bag, Cilic came out as the dominant winner.
“It’s a real privilege to be among these champions,” Cilic said. “It was really special this week. I played great tennis and I was enjoying every moment in my matches. I’m really glad I won for my supporters, my team and myself. Marcel is a really dangerous player, so it was not easy in the beginning. He was playing really well and not giving me too much. After I found some solutions, I kept with him and played great tennis. It was maybe my best match of the week.”
23-year-old Cilic is among the many professionals eyeing to catch come glory at the biggest sports event, the Olympic Games, about to begin by the end of this month.
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