Stanislas Wawrinka defeated Marin Cilic to set an all-Swiss semi-final clash with Roger Federer at the ATP World Tour Finals on Friday.
The 29-year-old third seed survived a second set blip to seal a 6-3 4-6 6-3 win over the Croat at the O2 Arena, London. He finishes round robin stage behind Novak Djokovic with a 2-1 record; his only defeat coming at the expense of the top seed who won all his three matches to take Group B.
Wawrinka, who won his first Grand Slam title at the Australian Open in January and the Monte Carlo Masters few months later, improves to 38-16 match record on the season.
US Open champion, Cilic, 26, ends the season with 54-21 match record. His was making his first appearance at the season-finale in London this year and would be disappointed to have ended with a 0-3 record in the round robin phase.
In their 10th ATP career head-to-head meeting in the evening session on Friday, Wawrinka hit 11 winners and lost just six of his service points. At 4-5 on the Lausanne-born Wawrinka’s serve in the second set, eighth seed Cilic raised his game forcing two groundstroke errors to force a decider.
Cilic surrendered an early break lead in the decider but clawed back to level at 3-3. Stan broke at 4-3 before closing it out in one hour and 46 minutes with his fourth service game.
