Feliciano Lopez seals the Queen’s Club title over Marin Cilic
By Gale Moorman
Feliciano Lopez wins the Queen’s Club Championships title. He defeats Marin Cilic to earn victory and gain some much needed momentum.
This year so far wasn’t successful for Feliciano Lopez having only gone two or three rounds at each tournament. He was stressful and a bit discouraged, but determined to be more consistent and win.
The grass court season came and his luck changed with him getting into the final at the Mercedes Open at Stuttgart, Germany.
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Lopez felt more accomplished even though he was defeated, but he did get through many tough players to land in the finals at the beginning of this grass court season. It was the two Frenchmen: Gilles Simon and Jeremy Chardy, veteran Tomas Berdych, Mischa Zverev (Alexander’s big brother) and then in the final another Frenchman, Lucas Pouille.
It was the big serves and aces, 29 to be exact to perplex Feliciano, even though he had taken the first set from Pouille. Three sets it went at 4-6, 7-6, 6-4. He was a little downtrodden on still not coming away with the Mercedes title.
It was the travel to England that might have made the difference, along with his determination to be more aggressive the next time around. And he was at the Aegon Championships otherwise known as The Queen’s Club.
The draw was quite the same as in Germany, but Feliciano had held to his promise of being more aggressive and consistent, mixing up strategies as he got through round after round first with Stan Wawrinka, Jeremy Chardy, Tomas Berdych, Grigor Dimitrov and he was playing great enough to land up in the finals with Marin Cilic.
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Lopez became unfocused in the first set as he dropped it to Cilic at 4-6. He had to gain his composure knowing it would have to be the next set he’d win otherwise he might have to say goodbye to another missed opportunity with poor results.
It was Lopez who put his foot down and zoomed to a 6-1 lead in the second set. He could feel that he was much of the way there to winning and he just wouldn’t let up. He did though and whether it was nerves or just becoming distracted, he came back mentally to win the second set tiebreaker with good volleying and a little help from Cilic who started making more errors than he should have.
"Cilic admits that “I had chances in the second set to get a break up but Feliciano played very well. He always plays well on grass…”"
The deciding set was another tiebreaker. It was high quality tennis for sure but both had opportunities that they should have made but missed. This last tiebreaker was Lopez’s volleying to capture his first grass court title.
"“I cannot believe that I have finally won…I have been waiting so long, 15 or 16 years, to be here holding this trophy”, he said. He admitted though that he blew his chances with the Mercedes Open, the last match when he played Grigor Dimitrov, “It is tough to put the match where I lost to Dimitrov out of my mind. I was serving for the match again and it was difficult to handle my nerves but I managed it”. Feliciano Lopez is relieved and says about the players he had to play: “It’s a tough draw, that’s why I think it’s the best week of my life winning Queen’s…”"
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Now everyone’s mind is on the main entree of the grass court swing which is Wimbledon. It’s the tournament most want to attend as fans and patrons and most players want to be their utmost brilliant — at this only grass court grand slam of the professional tennis tour.