Struff Upsets London Hope Cilic In Tokyo
Jan-Lennard Struff caused an upset at the Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships 2018 on Tuesday when he recovered to beat top seed Marin Cilic, a contender for a spot at the Nitto ATP Finals in November.
When Struff walked onto Arena 1 in the Musushino Forest Sport Plaza on Tuesday, he owned just a 1-12 record against opponents inside the Top 10 of the ATP Rankings. And despite trailing Cilic by a break in the third set, the German battled through to a 3-6, 6-4, 7-6(1) victory in the first round.
"It was a pretty tough one. Marin was serving twice for the match," Struff said. "I’m really happy I fought and hung in every point. At the end, I played a very good tie-break, and I’m very happy with the win."
While Cilic will be disappointed in his first opening-round loss in five months, the 30-year-old remains in sixth position in the ATP Race To London as he aims to qualify for his third consecutive Nitto ATP Finals, and fourth overall. The Croatian had reached back-to-back semi-finals in Tokyo, but he remains upbeat for the rest of the season.
“I have to evaluate the match with my team just to analyse a bit the things that I did well, things that I could do a little bit better. I now have five, six days until my next match in Shanghai, so I have time to train and also to mentally get ready,” Cilic said. “It’s getting to the end of the season and these events are big and you want to be sharp from the first match on. It’s important to just refresh, analyse well and keep going.”
"I tried to play every point and I was happy to go to the tie-break and in the tie-break, even after losing my serve on the first point, I played very tough," Struff said. "I’m pretty happy with my performance today."
Struff won the final seven points of the match, withstanding 13 Cilic aces to triumph after two hours and 20 minutes. He has now been victorious in five of his past six tour-level deciding tie-breaks, with all of those matches coming on hard courts. Struff is currently No. 56 in the ATP Rankings, just 12 spots off his career-best. The 28-year-old can move closer to that mark with a win in the second round, where he will face Frenchman Jeremy Chardy.
The Frenchman battled from a set down to defeat three-time ATP World Tour titlist Damir Dzumhur 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 in one hour and 45 minutes. The 31-year-old has now gotten through his opening-round match in Japan in all six of his appearances, and he has only lost to an opponent outside of the Top 20 in the ATP Rankings here once (2015, Muller).
Struff has won two of the pair’s three FedEx ATP Head2Head meetings, triumphing on the two occasions in which they competed on an indoor hard court. The German most recently beat Chardy last year in Marseille.