ATP Rotterdam: Marin Cilic Gets Off To A Winning Start

The ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament kicked off today with six of the world’s top 20 players in Rotterdam, looking to win the first ATP 500 event of the year. Two seeds were in action on the opening day, including 2014 runner-up Marin Cilic and a struggling Borna Coric.

Coric Defeats De Bakker In Thriller

Borna Coric celebrates his victory (Photo: Getty Images/Koen Suyk)

Borna Coric and Thiemo de Bakker played out the first three set match of the week in Rotterdam, as the young Croat edged past the rejuvenated home favorite. The pair created a combined 23 break points, with two combined to save 19 of those chances.

De Bakker will look back in disappointment after wasting ten set points in the first set, eventually going on to lose it in a tiebreak. He would drop the breaker 11-9 after ironically saving Coric’s first initial set point. The loss of the first set seemed to fire up the crowd favorite as he broke twice to race to a 4-1 lead, before handing back one of the hard-earned breaks in the following game. He found himself serving to take the match into a decider and must have felt as though it wasn’t going to be his night. After wasting two set points, this time on his own serve, de Bakker put the previous disappointment to the side and finally won the set on his 13th set point of the match.

In the fifth game of the deciding set, de Bakker created a break point, but failed to take advantage. That led to Coric holding for a 3-3 score line. Three games later proved to be the game of the match, as de Bakker initially saved six set points on his serve. He would miss a forehand volley to hand over the vital break to the Croatian youngster. Coric needed no second chances and wrapped up the victory with his 14th ace of the encounter.

Former Runner-Up Cilic Too Good For Istomin

Denis Istomin exits in the first round (Photo:Getty Images/Koen Suyk)

2014 runner-up Marin Cilic got his 2016 campaign in Rotterdam started with a solid straight sets victory over Denis Istomin. Their head-to-head stood at six to one in favor of Cilic and it showed in this encounter. Istomin did not create a single break point opportunity.

There wasn’t much to separate either player in the opening set with both combining to win 38 of 46 points on serve. This led to a tiebreak that continued to see neither player find an advantage, until Cilic took the first set by securing the first mini-break. The first 11 points were all won on serve in the breaker.

Istomin threatened a comeback in the second set, but he failed to take advantage of two break points. Later in the set, he would save four on his own serve, but the player from Uzbekistan was eventually broken while serving to stay in the match. That gave Cilic the 7-6 (5), 6-4 win.

Other Day One Results

Benoit Paire becomes the first seed to exit (Photo: Getty Images - Koen Suyk) — Benoit Paire becomes the first seed to exit (Photo:Getty Images/Koen Suyk)

The other two singles matches on day one failed to go the distance, but did include 7th seed Benoit Paire becoming the first seeded casualty of the week. He lost 6-3, 7-6 (4) to qualifier Ivan Dodig. It was the battle of Czech players that opened this year’s event in Rotterdam. Jiri Vesely won against Lukas Rosol in a comfortable score line of 6-4, 6-2. In the final match of the day, 2014 doubles champion Nicolas Mahut defeated Teymuraz Gabashvili in two tight sets, including a second set tie-breaker.

The doubles draw also opened on Monday as defending French Open champions Julien Benneteau and Edouard Roger-Vasselin were dumped out in the first round by recent Brisbane champions Henri Kontinen and John Peers.

Day Two Preview

Both the singles and doubles draws start to pick-up tomorrow with Court One being used for the first time in this year’s event. First up on Centre Court are Andreas Seppi and Gilles Muller, with the man from Luxembourg taking the court for a second time for doubles action later with partner Nenad Zimonjic. The two matches of the day both involve seeded players. David Goffin takes on Marcos Baghdatis and Gael Monfils starts the evening session against Ernests Gulbis.

Elsewhere, Court One features three of the top four seeded pairs in the doubles draw, including defending champions Jean-Julien Rojer and Horia Tecau. Daniel Nestor combines forces with recent Australian Open champion Jamie Murray, with Bruno Soares absent from the event. The pair take on Philipp Petzschner and Alexander Peya in the fifth match on Court One.