Marin Cilic has a score to settle with Roger Federer heading into today’s final (TV: TSN4, 9 a.m.). DiManno,
Memories of cliffhanger in last year’s quarter-finals backdrop for title showdown
WIMBLEDON, ENGLAND— Marin Cilic has set himself the task of scaling Mt. Roger.
Looking up, way up: “It’s a big mountain to climb.”
The six-foot-six Croat — who actually looks down on Roger Federer, at least across a net — has crested this Swiss Alp before.
He can take encouragement from that, knowing not only that the Fed Express can be derailed — mixing my metaphors here — but that he’s among the few who’ve done it, outside the iron-clad bracket of the Big Four.
Big Five, actually, an anointment usually extended to Federer’s countryman Stan Wawrinka, except Federer is the current world No. 5 and Cilic No. 6.
The conventional Big Four, Federer included, arrived at Wimbledon on a combined run of 14 straight titles, owning 44 of the last 49 men’s Grand Slam singles championships. Seven of the SW19 trophies belong to Federer, eyeballing a record eighth, nudging him ahead of his own personal idol, Pete Sampras.
Cilic, with Wawrinka and Juan Martin del Potro, has cracked that dominance — three years ago scooping the biggest prize of his career at the U.S. Open, battering Kei Nishikori after brushing aside Federer in straight sets, heeding the advice of his new coach to just “let it fly.” That followed on the heels of an imposed four-month layoff — otherwise known as a doping suspension for inadvertently (he argued) ingesting a banned stimulant found in a popular brand of glucose tablets.
In any event, capturing a major — his one and only — made Cilic, he says, “mentally stronger . . . maybe learned a few more lessons, valuable lessons.”
A year ago, however, there was an agonizing defeat to Federer in the quarter-finals at the All England Club where he led two sets to love and missed three match points. Memories of that horror might give the 28-year-old the willies. Cilic sounds sanguine about it.
“You know, in that match overall I played really well, I have to say. It was just decision-making at those crucial points, match points, break points even. In those critical moments, my mindset, picking the shots maybe wasn’t the best. I learned from that.”
So, a whole lot of learning to apply to Sunday’s final, which may lack the glitter of Federer versus Rafael Nadal or Novak Djokovic, but a changeup is never a bad idea really.
Certainly Federer has cited last year’s five-set stagger match against Cilic here as plenty good reason why a19th Grand Slam victory should not be considered a foregone conclusion. “We had a brutal quarter-final. Things were extremely complicated and I had to get really lucky to win.’’
And the humiliation at Flushing Meadows, of course. “He was clocking returns and serves at will. He was confident and feeling it and seeing it. It was very impressive.”
It was also exceedingly unpleasant for him, a disembowelment that lodged in his gut.
“He crushed me at the U.S. Open, when he played lights out. I hope he is not going to play that good. But I am really looking forward to playing against him.”
Strongest smackdown ever against him? He won’t go that far.
“If I say yes, it puts all the other great performances against me to shame.”
That’s Federer being self-effacing. He does gracious quite well. Gracious also comes smoothly after pro- ceeding through this tournament without dropping a single set, restored dreamily to a youthful self, dashing and aggressive and imperious on the court, as if corking the sand in the hourglass with his 36th birthday less than a month away.
Federer has astonished with his deftness and surging magnificence at Wimbledon after being all but written off a year ago, following arthroscopic surgery but before shutting it down for a six-month furlough, then returning and — to his own surprise — winning the Australian Open in January.
While it may be odd for Federer to not cross racquets with a Nadal or a Djokovic or an Andy Murray in or en route to a Grand Slam final, he reminds that a wide variety of opponents have crossed his path, including a swath of purported Big Four usurpers. “Thank God I’ve also played guys who were not called Rafa, Andy or Novak. From that standpoint I don’t want to say it’s more relaxing going into it because I have a good head-to-head record against Marin, even though the matches were extremely close. But it’s not like we’ve played against each other 30 times.
“You feel like you have to reinvent the wheel.”
Cilic’s enormous serve and big forehand had yielded three straight quarter-final appearances at Wimbledon but no man has taken longer to get to a final — 2017 his 11th try. Even given the supremacy of the vintage cadre, Federer et al, that’s hard to figure, with the Croat’s acing excellence but also a more diverse game than robotic howitzer servers. In the last year he’s apparently picked apart and reconstructed that brutally elegant serve under new coach Jonas Bjorkman. It’s averaging 122 miles per hour, bouncing more than 10 feet off the ground when he hits it properly. Getting on top of his serve is hugely challenging for an opponent.
Interestingly Cilic was a dark-horse pick for the championship among tennis cognoscenti, including former male players, from the start of the tournament.
“I was aware, very much aware of that,” he says. “People around talking really nicely and positively about my possibilities to go through the draw. Still, I know that I have that ability, but it was a matter of playing well on the court.”
Were Cilic to claim the laurels on the final day of Wimbledon, he’d become the first Croatian to win multiple Grand Slams, with only Goran Ivanisevic (as a wild card!) a previous male victor at Wimbledon, in 2001. Ivanisevic, who first saw Cilic play as a14-year-old, held the coaching reins between 2013 and mid-2016.
A few days ago, the player Cilic calls his idol offered some biting advice for his former disciple, in a column penned for the Times of London:
“If there is a lesson from last year’s match then it is when Federer is down, you need to stamp on him, kick him, hurt him some more. Roger is like someone from a film: Kill him and he gets up, so you have to kill him again. You have to kill him about 77 times to win.”
That certainly knocks the love out of tennis.