The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Cilic warns he is hitting best form of career
QUEEN’S: Croatian says he is feeling great on court and never been more consistent
Former US Open champion Marin Cilic has warned his Wimbledon rivals he is playing the best tennis of his career after he beat American Stefan Kozlov at Queen’s.
Cilic is the only top-five seed left standing at the Aegon Championships after Andy Murray, Stan Wawrinka and Milos Raonic all crashed out earlier in the week.
His 6-0 6-4 victory over Kozlov, a qualifier ranked 149th in the world, puts the Croatian three wins away from the title he secured in 2012 and continues an encouraging start to the grass-court season.
Last week, Cilic reached the semifinals at the Ricoh Open in Holland, before losing two tie-breaks to the bigserving Ivo Karlovic, backing up his run to the last eight at the French Open.
“I’m playing well really since the clay season started,” Cilic said.
“In these last two, three months, I’ve been feeling great on the court and I would say consistency-wise maybe it’s the best ever for me.
“But still I have to work to improve some areas of my game and just maybe get better day after day.”
Cilic, ranked seventh in the world, is among those in with an outside chance at Wimbledon, where his aggressive game and demon serve can be exploited to the full.
It is perhaps a surprise then that he has never gone past the quarter-finals at SW19 but his obstacles – Novak Djokovic twice and Roger Federer last year – were considerable.
“If we would play a little bit more on grass probably it would be my number one surface,” Cilic said.
“But as it’s such a short season, you can have some tough draws over here.
“I played John (Isner) first round here, and then last week I lost to Karlovic, and you can have those matches where you’re not dropping your serve and still losing them. So it’s not all about you on the court.
“But generally I enjoy playing on grass. The last few years have been really good for me, considering the results and also the way I was playing.”
Cilic will now face another awkward grass-court opponent in American Donald Young, while Sam Querrey overcame Murray’s conqueror Jordan Thompson 7-6 (7/3) 3-6 6-3 to book a quarter-final with Gilles Muller.
Russian Daniil Medvedev is up against Grigor Dimitrov after beating Thanasi Kokkinakis 6-2 6-2, and Feliciano Lopez will face Tomas Berdych. The Spaniard beat Jeremy Chardy 6-1 7-6 (7/4).
In the doubles, Jamie Murray and Bruno Soares made the semi-finals, beating Michael Venus and Ryan Harrison 7-6 (7/1) 4-6 10-6.