Cilic, Edmund Set Up Surprise Australian Open Semifinal

Croatia’s Marin Cilic and Great Britain’s Kyle Edmund will compete for a spot in the Australian Open final on Wednesday, after each won their respective quarterfinal matchups on Monday.

Cilic, a former U.S. Open champion and seeded number six in Melbourne, took on world number one and top-seeded Rafael Nadal and defeated the Spaniard for only the second time in his career, and the first since 2009. Nadal retired with a hip injury in the fifth set, as Cilic lead 3-6, 6-3, 6-7(5), 6-2, 2-0.

“In the end, very unfortunate because Rafa is always fighting really hard, always giving the best on the court,” said Cilic. “Extremely pleased with my own game. Even in these other matches before this one, I played great tennis. Very, very high level. Had a tough match against Carreno Busta in the last round. Then today, beginning of the match was not the best. I was always in that process where I want to keep going with my own game and try to lift it up…keep pushing as much as I can.”

After Nadal edged the third-set tiebreaker, Cilic came out firing in the fourth set and built a 4-1 advantage. It was then that Nadal took a medical timeout, and was never really the same. That hip continued to bother him as Cilic won the fourth set, and opened up a 2-0 advantage in the deciding fifth set.

The pain for Nadal quickly got worse and he was forced to retire from the match, doing so in a Grand Slam for only the second time in his career.

“Tough moments,” said Nadal. “It’s not the first time an opportunity that is gone for me. I am a positive person, and I can be positive, but today is an opportunity lost to be in the semifinals of a Grand Slam and fight for an important title for me.”

Into the Australian Open semifinals for the second time, Cilic will take on Edmund for a championship berth.

The unseeded Edmund ended the run of third-seeded Grigor Dimitrov, who had looked so impressive throughout the tournament, with a 6-4, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 victory. The 23-year-old needed just two hours and 49 minutes to get past Dimitrov in four sets.

“Grigor’s played some hard matches–he obviously played a high level match against Nick [Kyrgios] so I knew it was going to be tough,” said Edmund. “I had a bit of a dip in that second set–it was poor tennis at some points–but in the third set I managed to break him right at the end. Had a little blip in the fourth set but really just held my nerve in that last game.”

The little dip in the second set was the really only blemish on a dominating performance by Edmund. In all, Edmund hit more winners and aces, and won a higher percentage of his first serve points to stifle the third-seeded Bulgarian.

“It’s an amazing feeling. I’m very happy,” said Edmund. “With these sort of things, you are so emotionally engaged that you don’t really take it in, you don’t really enjoy it. So at the end of a hard match, I just tried to enjoy the moment.”

Cilic and Edmund have met just once before, a straight-sets win for Cilic in Shanghai last year.