Having won the match of his life as many of sport critics would say, Kei Nishikori played in finals of US Open Tennis Championship. What’s so thrilling about that is that he played against Marin Cilic, the Croatian that made his life wish come true on Monday evening.
Marin Cilic started his professional career in 2005 cooperating with his coach Bob Brett. Before that he started his career at very young age and moved to Zagreb in order to train harder and open some doors and opportunities for himself. In 2013 he was banned for drugs which did put a mark on his career but all seemed to settle when he won the match in the finals of US Open Championship. This seemed to pay off for him on Monday.
Many sport commentators do affirm that Monday evening was just what tennis world needed – something uncertain to shake the earth a little. Men tennis matches have been completely predictable during the last 10 years and there is a handful of tennis players that dominated the ‘best players’ lists for a long period of time (Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray).
Marin Cilic is officially the first Croatian player to reach a grand slam final ever since 2001. It was exactly in 200 when his coach Goran Ivanisevic won Wimbledon. Marin Cilic got to the title through three quick sets that completely left Nishikori without any possible solution.
The Croatian player was more stable and held his nerves in balance better than Nishikori. Marin is famous for his perfect serve that is so strong that completely left Nishikori desperate. After one hour and 54 minutes Marin did celebrate with fantastic 6-3, 6-3, 6-3 win. The great part of the match Nishikori have spent around the baseline not having many opportunities to defend himself.
Although nobody really predicted this would happen tennis world did need this refreshment. Nadal didn’t play at this years’ US Open Championship and Andy Murray showed far less than his potential. Novak lost to Nishikori in a hard match. And after all, Nishikori did affirm that Marin played at his best and that is was really hard to defend. Kei Nishikori also said that it was a tough loss but that he does feel happy to experience the feeling of being in his first final. As if for Marin, seems like there is a brand new star shining on the tennis’ sky, and he has the reason to be happy for that.
