By Richard Pagliaro | Tuesday, September 8, 2015
Reigning champion Marin Cilic denied Jo-Wilfried Tsonga's comeback with a gripping three hour, 59-minute victory to reach his second straight US Open semifinal.
Photo credit: US Open/USTA
NEW YORK—The orange sun was setting over the Manhattan skyline, while the the man in the fiery shirt was rising across the net.
A match that began in a sweltering afternoon escalated into a steamy night fight.
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga climbed out of a two-set hole, fought off four match points and pushed Marin Cilic to the limit in a punishing physical test.
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A resolute Cilic mastered brutal elements and a bruising opponent advancing to his second straight US Open semifinal.
It took five match points and three hours, 59-minutes but the reigning US Open champion prevailed with a grueling 6-4, 6-4, 3-6, 6-7 (3), 6-4 victory to extend his Flushing Meadows winning streak to 12 matches.
"It was tough especially after losing that fourth set (and) three match points," Cilic told ESPN's Tom Rinaldi afterward. "All of those match points I played pretty well and Jo just came up with amazing shots. The match got very physical toward the end. Conditions were extremely tough. Physically it was very, very demanding—a huge fight."
One that saw Cilic crank 29 aces, fight off nine of 10 break points and deliver some stunning running strikes at critical stages. Tsonga, who was moving sluggishly in the early stages and later had taping applied below his left knee, picked up his play considerably throwing everything he had at Cilic.
The champion stood up to all of it. The 26-year-old Cilic will play either world No. 1 Novak Djokovic or 18th-seeded Spaniard Feliciano Lopez in Friday's semifinals.
On the hottest day of the tournament, Cilic competed with toughness and tenacity winning his second marathon match of the tournament.
The ninth-seeded Croatian outdueled Mikhail Kukushkin in a four hour, 11-minute marathon —the second-longest singles match of the tournament —in the third round and twisted his ankle in the second set of his two hour, 26-minute victory over Jeremy Chardy in the fourth round.
Playing with a brace around his right ankle, Cilic saved four break points in the sixth game. Tsonga, who had held in all 56 of his service games in the tournament, blinked in the ninth game. Cilic broke for 5-4 and served out the first set in 49 minutes.
Muttering to his box between points, Tsonga looked jittery during a 10-and-a-half minute game he ended sailing a double fault to gift Cilic a 3-2 second-set lead. A pivotal point came with Cilic down 0-30 in the ensuing game. He cranked up his serve, surged back and held at 30 for 4-2. A backhand bolt down the line ended a second set in which Cilic won 20 of 23 points on serve.
The serve began clicking as Tsonga served 71 percent and dropped only three points on first serve to take the third set.
Two reasons the rangy Cilic has won five of six meetings in this rivalry is he uses his expansive reach to repel Tsonga angles, particularly on the inside-out forehand, and his two-handed backhand is a superior shot. He often used that weapon to corner Tsonga on his backhand wing. Credit the Frenchman for his fight.
In the 10th game, Tsonga saved two match points, crunching a forehand winner down the line on the first and drawing a running forehand that ballooned beyond the baseline on the second. Tsonga survived the crisis to hold for 5-all, but Cilic threatened to close again two games later.
Serving at 5-6, Tsonga sailed a shot giving Cilic a third match point two hours and 58 minutes into a sweaty serving slug fest. Cilic tried to answer a slice backhand with a drop shot but nudged it into net. A determinded defensive dig from Tsonga coaxed an error as he held to force the fourth-set tie break.
Attacking behind a forehand, Tsonga earned two set points. He rattled the court-side clock with an ace to level the match after three hours, eight minutes.
Dipping a running one-handed topspin backhand at the big man's feet, Tsonga earned the first break point of the decider at 2-1. During his US Open winning streak, Cilic's shown a remarkable ability to dot the service box like a man throwing darts at crunch time. He found the targets today.
Cilic crashed the back wall with an ace to nullify the break point. Banging another ace off the blue wall, Cilic held with a firm "Allez!"
"He just hit the ball a little bit more properly than me at the right moment, and that was a huge difference at the end, because he just made it," Tsonga said. "He just made it."
An exquisite drop shot brought Tsonga screeching forehand and set up a Cilic pass for 0-30. A short return coaxed the Frenchman forward but he sailed his forehand to face triple break point and another "Allez!" from a revitalized opponent. Backing Tsonga up with a crunching return down the middle, Cilic broke at love throwing clenched fist toward coach Goran Ivanisevic, who was wearing a Muhammad Ali t-shirt.
Dripping sweat after more than three and a half hours of play, neither man was floating like a butterfly by then. Both were still stinging serves. Cilic sent his 25th ace out wide, holding at 30 for 4-2.
Elevating his game to levels his opponent could not match, Cilic opened the eighth game with successive aces and ended it with a smooth drop shot winner, putting him four points from a semifinal return.
The only disappointments from this fierce fight was the stadium was only half full for the climax and underlying tension between the two created an indifferent handshake. A pity because both men battled so hard, but that rushed exchange did not undermine the quality of the match.