Cilic saves MPs against Uchiyama, advances to Hangzhou SFs

p Can a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/marin-cilic/c977/overview'Marin Cilic/a complete his fairytale comeback to the ATP Tour following his return from injury? /p

p Former a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/us-open/560/overview'US Open/a champion Cilic came back from the brink of defeat, saving two match points to survive a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/yasutaka-uchiyama/u134/overview'Yasutaka Uchiyama/a 6-2, 6-7(4), 7-6(5) Sunday to advance to the semi-finals at the a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/hangzhou/4713/overview'Hangzhou Open/a. /p

p The Croatian was serving at 5-6, 15/40 down in the final set, but rallied to win the match in a tie-break and down Uchiyama, who upset top seed a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/holger-rune/r0dg/overview'Holger Rune/a on Saturday. The 35-year-old Cilic also saved eight of the nine break point chances against him to seal his 67th Tour-level semi-final in his career and take his Lexus ATP Head2Head record against Uchiyama to 2-0. /p

pCilic is playing as a wild card in his first ATP Tour event since Buenos Aires in February, after he was sidelined with a knee injury for several months. Progressing to the semi-finals means that Cilic is now one step closer to attaining a 21st ATP Tour title and completing a perfect comeback. /p

pblockquote class="twitter-tweet"p lang="en" dir="ltr"Mar-INCREDIBLE! ????a href="https://twitter.com/cilic_marin?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@cilic_marin/a saves TWO match points to earn a semi-final spota href="https://twitter.com/HangzhouOpen?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@HangzhouOpen/a | a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/HangzhouOpen?src=hashamp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"#HangzhouOpen/a a href="https://t.co/rZY5v5XNJ0"pic.twitter.com/rZY5v5XNJ0/a/pmdash; ATP Tour (@atptour) a href="https://twitter.com/atptour/status/1837799618844758077?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"September 22, 2024/a/blockquote script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"/script /p

p"I think todayrsquo;s match was a really great level from both of us," Cilic said in his post-match interview. "In the second set he played really great, was serving great under pressure and served great until the end of the match. /p

p"For me, it was an amazing comeback, great to win that game at 5-3 when he was serving for the match and definitely thrilled with the win." /p

p The former No. 3 in the PIF ATP Rankings will meet fourth seed a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/brandon-nakashima/n0ae/overview'Brandon Nakashima/a in the semi-finals. Nakashima battled past Australian a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/rinky-hijikata/h0bh/overview'Rinky Hijikata/a, winning 7-5, 6-3 to reach his sixth ATP Tour semi-final. /p

p The American, who is at a career high No. 39 in the PIF ATP Rankings, converted all three of his break point opportunities to close out the match in 89 minutes. Nakashima also won 81 per cent of his first-serve points, according to Infosys ATP Stats, to extend his Lexus ATP Head2Head record against Hijikata to 2-0. /p

p "[It was a] very close match, I got off to a little bit of a slow start and went down an early break," Nakashima said after the match. "But I picked my level up when I needed it most in the first set and managed to ride the wave a bit and build some confidence". /p

p /p

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