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Melzer Bests Cilic To Win Home Tournament

POSTED: 1:19 pm MST November 1, 2009

(Sports Network) - 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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