Croatia’s best tennis player Marin Čilić advanced to the 3rd round of the Australian Open Grand Slam tournament, defeating Slovak Norbert Gombos 6:2, 6:3, 3:6, 7:6 (6) in Melbourne in two hours and 42 minutes of play. Čilić (ATP-27) justified the role of the favorite against Gombos, the 117th player in the world, in their first duel.
Čilić won the first set smoothly, but his problems started in the third set when Gombos took his serve for the first time in the second game. When Marin broke in the fifth game, the Slovak went to 3:4 and won the set.
The fourth set was entirely even and went to the tie-break, in which Marin led 4:2, Gombos returned, and at 6:5, he even has a set point on his serve. However, Čilić won three points in a row and prevented the match from going to the fifth set.
Čilić had 20 aces and only two double faults in the match with a first-serve percentage of 56 percent, 46 winners, and 56 unforced errors.
In the 3rd round, Čilić will go against the tournament’s fifth seed – Russian Andrey Rublev. The Russian tennis player lost in their first clash in Geneva in 2015 and celebrated in the following five matches.
Croatian tennis player Ana Konjuh said goodbye to the Australian Open after losing in the 2nd round to American Danielle Collins 4:6, 3:6 in 80 minutes of play. Unfortunately, Konjuh (WTA-58) did not find a way to confront the 30th-best player in the world in their first clash.
The Dubrovnik native lost her first serve in the second game, returned to the match by saving two set-points at 3:5, but immediately in the next game, she gambled at 40:15 and lost the set. Konjuh’s lost service in the second game of the second set proved fatal, and all that she had until the end of the match was one unused break-point at 3:5.
Konjuh had 8 double faults in this match and no aces. She had more winners than Collins (16-14) and more unforced errors (26-18). The American used all three break points.
Source: Index.hr
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