NEW YORK—Interesting things happen when two talented players who are also flawed competitors are thrown a Grand Slam match with a quarterfinal berth at stake. It’s a little like jamming two tom cats into a sack and tying the top closed.
We were presented with one of those matches today, when Mardy Fish pulled out of his match with Roger Federer, citing “medical advisement.” Fish has had to deal with and manage arrhythmia of the heart since early April of this year. The cancellation of the match left Arthur Ashe Stadium free to host the meeting of No. 12 seed Marin Cilic with the only unseeded male player in the fourth round, Martin Klizan.
Cilic is a 23-year-old Croatian who was once considered an equal partner in a menacing Gang of Giants that also included Juan Martin del Potro, Tomas Berdych, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, and Robin Soderling. He ran with that outfit for a good spell, and reached a career-high ranking of No. 9 about two-and-a-half years ago. But he was unable to withstand the heat in the kitchen, and subsequently plummeted as far as No. 32.
Although Cilic is now back up to No. 13, the book on the 6-foot-6 Croatian is that if you can keep pace with him and stand up to his excellent serve and power game, he gets frustrated and loses confidence more easily than he ought for a man of his size and power. Had Klizan been able to embrace that mission—and nothing in his repertoire or form of the day really prevented him—he might have found himself in the quarterfinals.
Instead, it was Cilic who advanced, 7-5, 6-4, 6-0, and in truth it was on something of a bluff. Klizan, the 23-year-old former Roland Garros junior champion from Slovakia, had more chances to win the first two sets than Li Na has Twitter followers in China.
At 4-all in the first set, Cilic serving, Klizan had two break points with Cilic unable to stick a first serve. The Slovak hit two errant second-serve returns, and Cilic survived the game. Serving to get into the tiebreaker, with Cilic clearly feeling a bit constricted in the throat, Kizan made three preposterous errors, including a double fault and a home run into the cheap seats (on the fly) to fall behind 15-40, and he was broken one point later to lose the set.
Klizan broke Cilic to start the second set, but allowed the Croat to roll through the next game. Although Klizan broke Cilic again in the third game, it was pretty clear by then that it would take a miracle for him to hold the lead. Sure enough, he fell behind love-40 when he served for 5-2—partly because of a dopey drop shot he tried at love-15. Klizan wiped away two break points with impressive forehand winners. Then he blasted the next one deep to yield the break. A distraught Klizan fan (is there any other kind?) leaped to his feet near me and cried, “Oh, no!”
Cilic held and bulled through Kilzan’s next game. Two sets were gone, and so was Kilzan’s mind; he never won another game.
Klizan, a lefty, is a talented guy, but charting one of his matches could leave you clutching a clipboard covered in hieroglyphics. Few players on the tour could have matched him today in the baffling shot selection department, or so consistently missed opportunities at either end of the court. That wouldn’t have been so bad had he not actually created those very opportunities that he then botched. But at least he was in touch with his inner bonehead.
“I had many chances,” Kilzan told me afterward. “The weather wasn’t great, but he played good tennis and broke me (for the first set) when I was serving on the worst side of the court. I had 4-2 in second, but I didn’t use it and that was biggest chance. Second set I was the better player on the court, everything was open, I could have won it easily. But I lost it. Third set he got a lot of confidence and he could do whatever he wanted. He killed me.”
Well, it’s encouraging that Klizan didn’t mince his words. Nor did he complain about having his match moved up a few hours and switched from Louis Armstrong Stadium to Ashe, a change that left him scrambling to get ready while having to do all the small, irritating chores (like securing tickets for his guests) usually left to the minions of a star.
“No, I was not nervous,” Klizan insisted. “The change was okay. That’s tennis. You have to be prepared for everything and we both had the same conditions.”
That mature assessment suggest that Klizan is more savvy than his performance today indicated. At 23, he still has a shot at becoming a tour regular (he’s won four Challenger events so far this year, all on his best surface, clay), and he’s certainly had his share of bad luck. Shortly after winning the boys’ title in Paris (he cracked the Top 400 at the age of 17), he was out for nine months—six of them spent without even lifting a racquet.
According to my colleague, Matej Grosek of the Slovakian newspaper Pravda, Miloslav Mecir—the former U.S. Open finalist and godfather of Slovak tennis—brokered a deal that recently brought together former ATP pro Karol Kucera and Klizan. Hopes are high in Bratislava and Kosice that Kucera, who once ranked as high as No. 6, will help Klizan find his way out of a career cul de sac.
Cilic’s situation hasn’t been as grave. He made his mark on the ATP tour at a relatively early age, and managed to hold a comfortable position despite his shortcomings and frustrations. But unlike the others in the Gang of Giants, Cilic has yet to make a Grand Slam final. If there’s an underachiever in that group, it’s Cilic.
Now on the upswing, Cilic understands that his own doubts were an impediment to keeping pace with his contemporaries. He said after today’s match, “Just winning (again), it sort of helped me to understand that I am in a good way, and I just have to, you know, keep pushing and not have any doubts in myself or the game I play.”
This was the first time Cilic played Klizan, and he stressed the tricky nature of the assignment. He was proud of how well he eventually handled the left-handed serve and figured out his opponent’s game, but in tennis there’s always another sack and another, bigger, tougher cat to contend with after a win like this one.