David Goffin pulled off the upset over the 2014 US Open Champion Marin Cilic in front of his home crowd. Goffin won in 4 sets, 6-4 6-4 3-6 7-5, and now the burden of Belgium’s faith lies on the shoulders of Kimmer Coppejans, who will have to try to surprise the 19-years old Borna Coric.
Start of the match was sort of chaotic, as there were three breaks of serve to start the match, with Goffin keeping the break. Both players kept holding pretty easily, with only one break point on Goffin’s serve and one set point on Cilic’s serve. Goffin served the set out with a clean game. Cilic could not be content with his serve, only 46% of his first serves went in, and Goffin attacked his second serves hard, so he won only 33% of points after a second serve. Add to it 23 unforced errors in the first set, and you get a quite bad performance from Cilic. The second set was scoreboard-wise very similar, but in reality it was quite different. Cilic started to serve more in, but Goffin just showed an amazing level on his service games, winning 93% of points after the first serve, and never losing more than one point a game on his serve. Goffin took an early break at 1-1, and he had 3 break points during a long game with 6 deuces at 3-1. Goffin once again served the set out. Third set was a fight from the beginning, as Cilic was 0-40 down and fought back through 4 deuces to keep his serve. Goffin had 2 more chances to take the lead on next Cilic’s service game, but he wasn’t successful with those as well. At 2-3, Goffin was leading 40-15, but Cilic fought hard on the return, and capitalized on his third break point in that game. Goffin saved a set point at 2-5, only to have Cilic serve the set out one game later. Cilic really stepped up his return games, he stopped making too many unforced errors and played focused tennis to win the set. The fourth set was really dramatic, and enjoyable for the spectators. The first half of the set, both players were holding on to their serves, we didn’t see a single deuce until 3-3. After that at 4-3, drama unveiled on Cilic’s serve. Goffin had failed on 3 break points, mainly because of Cilic’s serving, but then broke his serve to 5-3, so Goffin was serving for the match. Cilic wasn’t giving up, and played a really great return game, attacking each and every serve, and managed to break back. After two easy holds of serve, Cilic was serving to stay in the match. He didn’t deal with the pressure well and ended the match at 30-40 with a double fault. Goffin sent the tie into a decisive fifth rubber, in which Kimmer Coppejans will try to surprise Borna Coric, the big favorite of the match.
