Austria's Jurgen Melzer toppled Marin Cilic
of Croatia in straight sets on Sunday to capture the Bank Austria Tennis
Trophy title.
Melzer, the seventh seed, notched a 6-4, 6-3 triumph in the final to become
the first Austrian native to win in Vienna since Horst Skoff in 1988. Twice
previously, Melzer had lost title matches in Austria, falling to Juan Martin
del Potro last year in Kitzbuhel and losing to Nikolay Davydenko in 2005 in
St. Poelten.
"It's always nice winning a tournament, especially winning at home is a great
achievement," said Melzer. "After all the pressure, it's just nice to be able
to win that final point to win the tournament and I'm really happy about it.
It's an unbelievable story to win at home and satisfy the crowd."
Sunday's victory gave Melzer just his second career ATP singles title and
first since winning in Bucharest three years ago. He has also lost six times
in title matches.
It was also Melzer's first victory over Cilic in four tries. All three
previous meetings came last year, including a second-round matchup at the
Australian Open.
The top-seeded Cilic was trying for his fourth career title and third in a
breakout 2009 season. He won in Chennai back in January and also captured the
crown in Zagreb in February.
After a quarterfinal loss to eventual champion del Potro at the U.S. Open,
Cilic reached the final in Beijing just two weeks ago. He beat Rafael Nadal in
the semifinals before losing to Novak Djokovic.
"The season was really good and I'm happy about it," said Cilic. "These past
two months I played really good and I'm looking forward for these next two
tournaments in Basel and Paris, which I hope I'm going to play as well as
here."
Cilic, the 13th-ranked player in the world, still has an outside chance to
claim one of the final two spots in the season-ending ATP World Tour Finals.
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