PUNE: Marin Cilic had had some interesting match up with Roger Federer, and although he has an underwhelming 1-9 head to head record against the Swiss legend, the Croat feels the 20-time Grand Slam champion would be missed on the professional tennis tour.
“Obviously, we all never wanted Roger to leave, you know, because he's a great guy, obviously incredible inspiration not only for us on the tour, but for many kids around the world, and also to many of these next gen guys that are now at the top,” the former US Open champion said at the Tata Open Maharashtra on Monday.
“He was, and probably still is, an idol. So, it's definitely difficult to see him go and the tour is definitely going to be different.”
Federer retired from the game last year but he had missed a considerable chunk of the previous two seasons as he underwent two knee surgeries and underwent lengthy recovery.
Cilic pushed Federer to the limits in an engrossing quarterfinal at the All England Club in 2016 when the latter overturned a two-set deficit.
The Croat, who lost to Federer in the final at the same venue the following year, termed Novak Djokovic’s deportation from Australia last year as “unfair” and “disastrous”.
“Hats off to Novak (Djokovic) because he went through a very big emotional difficulty last year and definitely, whatever it was, it wasn't fair to him. Absolutely not,” the 34-year-old said.
“It was disastrous for him as an athlete to go through those things. It just proves again that he's got that stellar ability to keep his focus, to keep his mentality up and then still win a Grand Slam last year.”
Cilic, however, believed that men’s tennis was in for an interesting season with Carlos Alcaraz, Felic Auger-Aliassime, Holger Rune and other youngsters breaking “open a few doors” for themselves.
“Yeah, I would say that this last season was interesting,” Cilic, world ranked 17, said, referring to Alcaraz winning the US Open and Casper Ruud reaching two major finals, at Roland Garros and Flushing Meadows, besides Auger-Aliassime playing a stellar role in Canada’s Davis Cup win.
“Quite a few guys opened quite a few doors for themselves. Felix, at the end of the season, was incredible like Daniil’s (Medvedev) 2019 season — winning three in a row (in Florence, Antwerp and Basel) and also the Davis Cup.
“Holger winning in Paris (Masters) and Alcaraz, to sort of make that improvement from year to year, unbelievable … and so mix them in with Daniil, Zverev, Tsitsipas and Shapo … so many guys are now close.
“So, I would say that this year is going to be better for each spot in the top 20.”
Cilic himself had an encouraging season in 2022 in which he reached the French Open semifinals for the first time in his career, which put him among a rare group of players to have reached the last-four of all majors.
He missed the Wimbledon after testing positive for Covid, which was the only sore note in an otherwise stellar year on the court.
“Yeah, I would say that 2022 was a very positive year for me,” he said.
“First part of the season, I played some great tennis. I was just a little bit unfortunate not to go through in the Australian Open last-16 match (lost in five sets to Auger-Aliasime) and then things bounced really high up in the French Open.”
Cilic said he had to “reinvent” himself after 2021 in which he won two titles but felt his game was “up and down”.
“I think I was in a way as you said, reinventing myself, finding the new formula, new ways to do things and putting things together with my team because I felt overall you know, everything was working quite well in the practices but sometimes in the matches was not working as well.
“And so this is extremely important to produce that when the match is on the line, when the sets are on the line, and that can definitely give you a much bigger push through the tournaments. And that was great."
