Marin Cilic’s victory in the final of the US Open at Flushing Meadows may have just changed the face of tennis for the first time in a long while.
For a decade now, the big names of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, then later Novak Djokovic and, to a more limited extent, Britain’s Andy Murray, have dominated tennis.
But Stanislas Wawrinka’s victory in the Australian Open at the start of 2014 and now Cilic’s victory in the US Open in New York seem to be signalling an end to the way things have been. Before Wawrinka’s win in Melbourne, we have to travel back in time five years to Argentinian Juan Martín del Potro’s US Open win in 2009 for the last man outside the big four to have a won a Grand Slam event.
And if you look more closely still at the record books, you have to go back a further four and a half years to Marat Safin’s win in Melbourne in 2005 for the previous non big four Grand Slam winner.
So maybe things are beginning to change? The newly-crowned US Open winner certainly seems to think so. According to a report by online bookmaker bet365, Cilic thinks his win may change tennis for the better – encouraging other players from outside the traditional big four in the belief that they can win the majors too.
Cilic won his inaugural Grand Slam tennis title with a straight-sets victory over Japan’s Kei Nishikori, 6-3, 6-3, 6-3 to become the first Croatian to win a tennis major – since his coach, Goran Ivanisevic, won at Wimbledon back in 2001. Even more interestingly, Cilic’s US Open win completes an amazing Grand Slam year that has now witnessed eight different winners across all Majors’ men’s and women’s singles titles for the first time in 16 years.
What’s more – as he was seeded at just 16 in the world, Marin Cilic became the lowest-ranked US Open champion for 12 years since Pete Sampras won in 2002 seeded 17. In fact, he became the least-ranked winner of any Grand Slam event since Argentina’s Gaston Gaudio won at the 2004 French Open when ranked 44 in the world.
And finally whilst we’re still on Cilic’s record-breaking stats, the last Grand Slam final featuring two finalists who had never made it to a Grand Slam final before was the match between another Argentine Mariano Puerta and Rafael Nadal at Roland Garros in 2005. Of course, that was Nadal’s first ever French Open – and he’s now won a record-breaking nine in total. No-one is expecting Marin Cilic to dominate the men’s game in anything like the way Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer have – but at just 25 years of age and standing at six feet, six inches, the big-serving Croat may well have a few more Grand Slams in him yet. He certainly seems to have upset the old guard, anyway, and may just have changed the face of world tennis.
