NEW YORK — The ultra-exclusive club of active men’s tennis players with Grand Slam titles welcomed a new member Monday evening at Arthur Ashe Stadium, and in every sense, from his poise to his booming serve to his big-point fortitude, Marin Cilic looked as if he belonged. He also acted as if he belonged, celebrating his U.S. Open title and hoisting its trophy with just enough abandon to appear human, but with enough restraint to give the impression he expected to do this.
It will be some time, of course, before anyone knows whether Cilic’s championship — capped by a thorough dismantling of Japan’s Kei Nishikori, 6-3, 6-3, 6-3 in the final — represents anything beyond its surface-level meaning: that this 25-year-old from Croatia was, for these two weeks, the best player in the field.
“I was dreaming about this all my life,” Cilic said. “What it means to me — it means everything. It’s a huge accomplishment and a huge moment for myself and everybody around me who was with me all these years. This is just the peak of the world.”
For the 24,853 on hand Monday, and for those who tuned in on television despite the lack of star-power — the dream final of Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic having blown up in the semis — Cilic, a former junior prodigy whose career to this point was marked by inconsistency, was a revelation.
He overpowered Nishikori, a noted return specialist, with a serve that topped out at 134 mph and produced 17 aces. But he also broke Nishikori’s serve five times, made six fewer errors and showed surprising agility for a man who stands 6-foot-6. Dating back to the fourth round, Cilic won 10 straight sets on his relentless march to the title. Federer, the last man, in 2007, to win the U.S. Open without losing a set in the quarters, semis or final, was Cilic’s straight-sets victim in Saturday’s semifinal.
The now 18-time winner of the grand slam singles crown, Serena Williams was photographed with the U.S. Open trophy at New York's iconic Empire State Building Monday. (Reuters)
“Suddenly, in the last four or five days everything started to change with my tennis,” Cilic said. “I started to play unbelievable.”
The temptation will be to see bigger trends and draw larger conclusions, that perhaps the era of dominance by the holy triumvirate of Federer, Rafael Nadal and Djokovic – responsible for a combined 38 major titles overall, and 34 of the past 38 -- is being upended by a new wave of youth, or that the long-predicted era of Big Man tennis is upon us.
But do so at your own risk. The last time a Grand Slam breakthrough was touted as the dawn of a new era in men’s tennis — when Switzerland’s Stan Wawrinka won the Australian Open in January — Nadal and Djokovic promptly took the next two majors, at Roland Garros and Wimbledon (and over Djokovic and Federer, respectively), to put an end to such talk.
Likewise, since 6-foot-6 Argentine Juan Martin del Potro won the 2009 U.S. Open, spawning a thousand trend stories about the rise of the Big Man in tennis, nobody taller than 6-3 has won another Grand Slam. Long wingspans and huge serves may look scary on the otherwise of the court, but they don’t win major championships.
“One day, definitely they’re going to go out, and there’s going to be a need for someone else,” Cilic said about the handful of players who have dominated the sport. “I feel it’s going to be much bigger competition next year. And the guys at the top are going to pull the other guys up, and the game of tennis is going to evolve much more.”
As might be expected of a crowd that bought its tickets expecting to get Federer-Djokovic only to end up with Cilic-Nishikori, there was little electricity in the stands at the start of the match. Nishikori, slightly better-known and more animated, drew the larger applause, and in one corner of the stadium, a handful of fans tried to get a cheer to take hold – “Kei! Kei! Kei!” – with little success.
It wasn’t until the third set, with Nishikori already down two sets and a break, that he seemed to come alive, reviving the crowd along with him. He had a double break point, blew that chance, gained another break point, smacked a second serve from Cilic into the tape for deuce, then lost the next two points and the game. Moments later, Cilic closed out the match with another powerful service game that included a pair of aces and a devastating forehand-backhand combination to finish it off.
At the end, Cilic dropped to the ground, stretched out on his back, then rose to shake Nishikori’s hand. His next stop was a corner of the stands, where his family sat along with his coach and countryman, Goran Ivanisevic, the 2001 Wimbledon champion.
A year ago, Cilic didn’t even make it to Flushing Meadows, serving out a four-month drug suspension — the result, he said, of his inadvertent ingesting of a banned stimulant in a glucose supplement his mother gave him.
Now, he is a U.S. Open champion, a Grand Slam title winner, and just maybe, the herald of something bigger in men’s tennis.
Dave Sheinin has been covering baseball and writing features and enterprise stories for The Washington Post since 1999.
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