Gentle giant Cilic hopes to lift Dubai tennis title
dubai — Croatia’s Marin Cilic will be hoping to follow in the footsteps of his countryman Goran Ivanisevic when he competes for the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships trophy later this month, a press release said.
Ivanisevic won the title in 1996 and finished runner-up the following season, before going on to win Wimbledon in 2001. He then turned his hand to coaching and worked with Cilic from September 2013 to July 2016, a period during which Cilic won the US Open.
Cilic now has 18 titles and has reached a further 14 finals — including the 2018 Australian Open and 2017 Wimbledon when he was in tears as he battled not just Roger Federer but a severe blister on his right foot which greatly hindered his movement.
By coincidence, at the end of that season he and Federer found themselves taking a vacation at the same place in the Maldives.
“I didn’t want to bother him. He didn’t want to bother me,” Federer recalls. “After two days, he wrote me: ‘I’m here, too, in case you want to catch up and stuff, let me know’.”
The pair then practised twice and even got together for dinner with their families.
One of the most difficult tasks in tennis would be finding anyone who doesn’t like Cilic.
Despite the talent that has made him a Grand Slam champion, earned him a place in the finals of both Wimbledon and the Australian Open, given him a place among the top three players in the world and a Davis Cup winner’s medal, he remains a calm, polite, humble and soft-spoken individual.
And the Croat has used his success and influence to help others.
In 2016, he launched the Marin Cilic Foundation which that year earned him the Arthur Ashe Humanitarian Award from the ATP.
The Foundation’s aim is to provide both the space and financial support to children and youth whose circumstances make realising their dreams seem like a distant reality. Helping him with the project has been Kristina Milkovic, who he met in 2008 at a Davis Cup tie in Dubrovnik and married last April.
While Cilic will begin the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships as one of the favourites for the prestigious title, he faces a daunting challenge with seven-time champion Federer, recent Australian Open sensation Stefanos Tsitsipas, former Wimbledon runner-up Milos Raonic and two-time Dubai finalist Tomas Berdych among those also vying for the crown.
The Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships begin on February 17 with the WTA event. The men’s tournament begins on February 25.