Chennai is the best preparation

Top ranked Croatian player and World No. 6 Marin Cilic would be opening his upcoming season in Chennai when he takes part in the Chennai Open next month. 

After an eventful 2016 that included wins over the world’s top two players — Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic — a Masters 1000 title in Cincinnati, a five-set loss to Roger Federer in the Wimbledon quarter-finals and a shock Davis Cup loss, Cilic is keen to step up the ante in the new season.  

In an interview to DTNext,  Cilic opened up on a variety of  topics. 

You played the season opener in Brisbane 2016 and what is the reason for choosing Chennai in 2017?  

Chennai is the place where I enjoy playing a lot. It brings great memories for me. I started my ATP career in Chennai starting with qualifying back in 2007 and won twice — in 2009 and 2010. It’s always a beautiful memory for me. I am hoping I can even win in 2017 and continue with a good display of tennis. I felt and maybe in the past Chennai has worked the best for me in terms of conditions and preparations for the future. Especially for Australian Open as the conditions are a little  heavier and a little bit warmer and little bit more humid so it demands little bit more physicality on the court.  I think those are all big pluses and positive things for the preparation and it’s a great way to start the year and especially if you are winning a few matches in Chennai, it helps a lot.

My goal going into the upcoming season and Chennai Open will be to reach the top five as there will be a lot of great players behind me and ahead of me as well. It’s going to be tough. My goals for 2017 will be to win another Grand Slam or may be more. I know it is difficult to achieve but I believe in my self and my game and will push myself to do all those things.

Andy (Murray) showed a lot of passion throughout the season that he had been in great form and motivated in his game and transformed great on the court, which is why I had a title  drought. Cincinnati was a great tournament in my career as I was playing very aggressively and serving in the same manner as well. And when I’m doing that on the court I believe I have a good chance against all the players in the world. And definitely the win in Cincinnati was absolutely great.

I joined Jonas in August and we’ve already started to work on a lot of things and achieved a lot of success. A few things that we worked on are — different understanding of the game and how I approach the nets. Everyone has a different understanding of the game and how to approach it tactically, which has been really good for me and we’re going to have a lot of time to work on my game on the nets and I’m really enthusiastic how it’s going to pan out in the next season. Even with a lot of victories by the end of the season, reaching the World Tour Finals, reaching the top-eight as well, shows how much I have improved and able to transform in such a short period.

Borna has been a regular at Chennai and it is great to see him come back there. I know he is a great talent, great player. We are going to be seeing a lot of him and over the years a lot of great players were coming from there. I remember even Rafa back in some early days of his career, he was  coming from what position Borna is right now.