‘I’ve been blessed’: Cilic sees bigger picture on comeback trail

HONG KONG: While the tennis world is focused on Rafael Nadal´s comeback in Brisbane this week, another Grand Slam champion, Marin Cilic, is playing his first tournament after an injury-ravaged 2023 during which he thought his career might be over.

When the 2014 US Open champion injured his right knee almost exactly a year ago at the Pune tournament in India, he had no idea it would herald 12 months of pain, surgery, rehab and reflection.

But the big-serving Croatian is back on court in Hong Kong this week, wondering if the long months of treatment and the hard work to come back have all been worth it.

“Who knows?” the 6ft 6in (1.98m) Cilic told AFP at Victoria Park, the venue for this week´s Hong Kong Open.

“It was an interesting year that stopped right at the beginning,” he said.

“I had a surgery on the meniscus and also there was an issue with the cartilage.”

Cilic began the year on the up, having in 2022 broken back into the world´s top 15 for the first time since 2019, but his inaction has seen him slide to 674th.

He faces a tough assignment in his comeback match when the first round in Hong Kong gets under way on Monday, having drawn Germany´s world number 25 Jan-Lennard Struff.

“Definitely a difficult opponent, especially for the start of the new season for me -- and for him,” Cilic smiled.

“We´ve known each other for many years and we are really great friends. So definitely it´s going to be a big challenge, a big task.”

It´s an important barometer for Cilic as he tries to get some miles into his legs ahead of the Australian Open, which begins in two weeks.

Cilic has enjoyed success at the first Grand Slam of the year, coming within a whisker of winning in 2018 when he lost an epic five-set final to Roger Federer. “I had some chances there,” recalled Cilic, who had beaten the Swiss great in the semi-finals on the way to his lone Grand Slam title in New York four years earlier.