Second-seeded Marin Cilic of Croatia retained the Chennai Open title Sunday with a 7-6 (2), 7-6 (3) victory over third-seeded Swiss player Stanislas Wawrinka in the final.
The 21-year-old Cilic repeated his feat of winning a title in the new season's first week for the second successive year.
"It's been a good start to the year, winning back-to-back Chennai Open titles will surely boost my confidence,'' said Cilic. "This is an ideal preparation for the Australian Open.''
With this victory, Cilic emulated Spaniard Carlos Moya's feat of winning successive titles here in 2004 and 2005.
A capacity crowd at the Nungambakam Stadium witnessed the keenly-contested three-hour encounter that saw world No. 14 Cilic defeating Wawrinka for the first time in five meetings.
The title triumph earned Cilic $68,450 (?47,957.68), while Wawrinka got $35,980 (?25,208.44).
"I'm proud to have won two titles here. It wasn't easy out there today, I had to work hard for victory,'' said Cilic.
"Wawrinka also had a good week, but this was my day,'' he said.
Wawrinka said Cilic deserved to be the winner as he played exceptionally well.
"I missed a chance to win a title today, because Marin was playing so well,'' said Wawrinka. "My game's been good throughout the week.''
"I needed to push him a bit more, and more aggressive during the tiebreaks,'' he said.
The second-seeded Spanish pair of Marcel Granollers and Santiago Ventura won the doubles title, defeating Janko Tipsarevic of Serbia and Yen-Hsun Lu of Taiwan 7-5, 6-2 in the final.
