Cilic marches past Kozlov into Queen's quarter-finals
Fourth seed Marin Cilic overpowered American teenager Stefan Kozlov 6-0, 6-4 to reach the quarter-finals of the Aegon Championships on the Queen's Club grass on Thursday.
Croatian Cilic, winner of the prestigious Wimbledon warm-up event in 2012, romped through the first set in 24 minutes but was given more of a workout in the second.
Kozlov, 19, showed some tidy grasscourt skills of his own but never hinted at breaking the Cilic serve, which offered up only seven points to the American during the 65-minute contest.
New tournament favourite Cilic, who beat John Isner in round one, will now take aim at his third American in a row in the quarter-finals when he takes on unseeded Donald Young.
The tournament has already lost top seed and five-times champion Andy Murray, Swiss world number three Stan Wawrinka and 2016 Wimbledon runner-up Milos Raonic while French Open champion Rafael Nadal pulled out before the start.
Later on Thursday American Sam Querrey, champion in 2010, plays Murray's conqueror Jordan Thompson of Australia while Spaniard Feliciano Lopez takes on Frenchman Jeremy Chardy.
Nishikori retires injured at Halle as Wimbledon looms
World number nine Kei Nishikori's Wimbledon preparations suffered a setback on Thursday when he was forced to retire injured from his Halle Open round of 16 match against Russian Karen Khatchanov.
The third seed needed to take a medical time-out to treat a back injury before playing on for a few points and retiring with the score at 3-2 in the first set for the Russian.
Wimbledon, the only grand slam to be played on grass, starts on July 3.
Khachanov will now play the winner of the match between fellow Russians Mikhail Youzhny and Andrey Rublev.
