Diego Schwartzman Dethrones Marin Cilic at Queen’s Club Championships 2019

The defending champion at Queen’s Club Championships, Marin Cilic has been toppled over by the Argentine tennis player, Diego Schwartzman 6-4, 6-4 in the pre-quarterfinals. With this victory, Schwartzman reaches his first ever grass court quarterfinals.

The Croatian defeated Gary Christian in the opening round of Fever-Tree Championships 2019 but couldn’t sustain his last year’s glory where he defeated Novak Djokovic in the finals. In the previous round, Diego Schwartzman had a straight-set win over Alexander Bublik at Queen’s. 

As Diego Schwartzman clinched his third victory on the grass surface, he began with taking the first set 6-4 in less an hour. The fifth seed, Cilic was broken twice in the opening set, but he managed to take ones of his breaks back from the Argentine ‘Peque’.

In the second set, Diego Schwartzman earned the first break point of the set by placing a lob on Cilic’s court and he was successful in converting the breakpoint to seize the opening break of the set. The Croatian skyscraper could come up six service aces but his four double-faults made his all his aces futile.  

Until 3-2, in the second set, Diego Schwartzman did not drop a single on his serve and continued to play safely on his service games. Also, the forehand unforced errors from Cilic’s end outnumbered those of Diego Schwartzman.

He closed out the match with two aces in his last service game and sealed his first ever quarterfinal berth on the grass. Also, its the biggest match-win for Diego Schwartzman on the turf. The Argentine, Schwartzman could reach the second round at Wimbledon 2018 and Cilic was the finalist at Wimbledon 2017. 

With this match at Queen’s, Cilic’s career matches on the grass (at all levels including juniors) sum up to 105 and it was 12th career match for Schwartzman on the grass.