Video highlights: Roger Federer defeats Marin Cilic in the second round
On day five of the French Open, it was the 11th career meeting between Roger Federer and Marin Cilic. Roger Federer would take the match in just over two and a half hours, defeating Cilic in four sets 6-2, 2-6, 7-6(4), 6-2. Here are the highlights from the match below.
Federer is now 10-1 against Marin Cilic in his career, with his only loss to him coming in the 2014 US Open semi-final, where Cilic beat Federer in straight sets on route to winning his only Grand Slam title. Federer has now pushed his winning streak over Cilic to five straight after Thursday’s win.
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The key difference in the match was that Federer was a lot better on the second serve than Cilic was. Federer only had one double fault in the entire match, while winning 57% of the points on his second serve, according to Infosys Match Centre. Cilic on the other hand had six double faults, and was only able to win 40% of the points on his second serve.
Since Federer was winning a lot more points on Cilic’s second serve, he was generating a lot more break point chances. Federer broke Cilic five times on 16 attempts, while Cilic broke Federer three times on only eight attempts. So although Cilic was converting the breaks at a higher percentage, Federer was generating more opportunities.
One thing that Cilic struggled with in the match was the number of unforced errors he hit. Cilic had 44 unforced errors, which was one more than the number of winners he had in the match. Federer was much better in that category, having hit 47 winners to go along with just 27 unforced errors.
The third set tiebreak was huge for both players, since you knew that whoever was going to take that set was going to have all the momentum to eventually win the match. In the end, it was Federer who played better in that tiebreak, taking it 7-4, before eventually winning comfortably in the fourth set to take the match.
Federer now advances to the third round, where he will take on world number 59 Dominik Koepfer on Saturday.