on Centre Court How losing made Cilic a winner...
MARIN CILIC had just powered past Sam Querrey into the Wimbledon final but he wanted to discuss losing more than winning.
‘It’s tough when you’re losing but losses are giving you a clearer picture,’ he said last night. ‘When you are winning, everything is great.’
The Croat spoke with the benefit of experience, having struggled to rediscover the ingredients that took him to the US Open title as a 25-year-old in 2014.
That success was a rare foray into the territory of the Big Four of men’s tennis and Cilic was touted as the next big thing.
Yet in the wretched early months of this year that looked like fantasy. Cilic’s game had crashed before he resurrected it in May by winning the Istanbul Open.
Some feel he needs a meaner streak — and he certainly was unwilling to agree publicly with compatriot and coach Goran Ivanisevic, who has been telling anyone who will listen that Cilic may well win this trophy.
‘I was aware of people talking nicely about my possibilities,’ he said. ‘I knew it was a matter of playing well on the court.’
Cilic’s support team say he is reaching a new level because he is playing without injury for the first time in six years. But it is the psychological dimension which seems to have made the difference to a man who had reached the quarter-finals here for the past three years without taking the next stride — until now.
Mentality was something Cilic mentioned six times after beating American Querrey. ‘I’m mentally stronger. I feel I got mature a little bit more in dealing with losses.’
The inner mind of a tennis player can be a complicated place.
‘If you went to a park tomorrow and watched the top 20 players in the world and they had their faces covered I promise you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the No 20 and the No 1 — that’s how close it is,’ says the former British No 1 John Lloyd.
‘At crunch time, top players know what to do at the right time. That is about mindset.’
His assessment certainly applied to the Querrey match — a titanic, two hours and 56 minutes of unalloyed power play in which No 7 seed Cilic had ghosts to banish.
Querrey began at a level unrecognisable from his stuttering quarter-final first set against Andy Murray and claimed a tiebreak in a way which would have haunted many opponents.
First, Cilic sacrificed a 4-1 lead. Then, at 6-6 on the Croat’s serve, a member of the public was taken ill, forcing the players to wait on court for five minutes while Wimbledon staff tried to help the individual out of Centre Court. When play resumed, Cilic overhit successive groundstrokes to hand the Californian the set.
Unmoved, Cilic secured a crucial break at the start of the second set and won it. Querrey scrapped remorselessly in the third set but Cilic dug in and managed to win it on a tiebreak.
First blood went to Querrey in the fourth and for a time it was Cilic’s serve which seemed to be showing signs of wear. Then the Croat hit back again for 4-4 and did not look back.
There is something about good ol’ Sam the Californian which tells you he is not destined to be the men’s Grand Slam winner the USA has sought since Andy Roddick. Cilic’s own benign exterior masks something more visceral.
With Ivanisevic in his camp, he has his answer ready when asked about that Wimbledon clash burned into the mind of every selfrespecting Croat — the final win over Pat Rafter in 2001.
‘The famous question!’ Cilic reflected when asked where he was when Ivanisevic won. ‘In Croatia everyone knows where they were. It was a tennis camp close at my hometown. We were a big group. I was 13 years old.’
Roger Federer’s victory last night means Cilic will confront the man he almost defeated in last year’s quarter-final — a man who survived three match points. ‘Yes, I was one point away,’ he reflected, ‘but I believe in my own abilities.’
No-one outside the Big Four has won the men’s singles title here for 14 years. The biggest test of Cilic’s mental strength lies right ahead.