WHAT HAPPENED: It’s been 11 years since Marin Cilic won the championship here, his solo Grand Slam title. And it’s been three years since he’s played in New York at all, a hiatus forced by knee surgery. So the 6-foot-6 Croatian sounded reflective when contemplating his chances here—at the age of 36 and ranked No. 62 in the world, down from a career high of No. 3.
“Here, all my dreams came true, so coming here again always brings the goosebumps,” Cilic told the media before the tournament began, adding that it “always brings a little bit of a sensation of, ‘Can I do it again?’”
At the end of a disappointing Round 1 match the answer to that question was—this year anyway—no. Cilic’s dreams were dashed by the No. 23 seed Alexander Bublik. Final score: 6-4, 6-1, 6-4.
The match-up was intriguing even before the players took to the court. Cilic was bringing 15 years of experience to Grandstand stadium, while 28-year-old Bublik walked in with more recent successes, including ATP titles this summer in Halle (grass), Gstaad and Kitzbuhel (clay).
Evidence that Bublik also brought along his singular brand of tennis—a style that often includes underhanded serves and drop shots—was not on show at the start of the match. Instead, the first set featured a series of textbook baseline rallies, punctuated by monster serves.
Bublik seemed to be testing Cilic’s rebuilt knee, hitting short, sharp and hard-to-retrieve angles. Cilic passed those tests. When down on the scoreboard, Bublik, at 6-foot-5, hammered aces and other unreturnable serves.
Then, when serving at 4-5, Cilic played an uncharacteristically loose game, donating errors that included a double fault when down 0-40. The tight first set went to Bublik, 6-4.
Cilic’s less-than-pristine play continued. He dropped serve at the start of the second set. Around the match’s one-hour mark, his first-serve-in stat had dipped to 44%. And he was winning just 42% of his second serves, which often clocked in at around 75 miles-per-hour.
Safe to say, this was not classic Cilic. In a matter of 10 minutes or so, Bublik had cruised to a 5-1 lead—while Cilic looked sluggish on the baseline and struggled with unforced errors, 20 of them on the match by the time Bublik closed out the second set, 6-1.
Would the Croatian find his form in time to turn the match around? At the start of the third set, Cilic seemed to recover his first-set freshness, keeping pace with Bublik and even rushing to the net on his own volition, where he won 85% of his attempts (eight of 10).
But in the sixth game of the third set, tied at 3-3, Cilic dropped serve—and his chances of coming back from two sets and a break down looked dim. When Bublik stepped up to serve at 5-3, he didn’t blink and ended up finishing out the match.
WHAT IT MEANS: No. 1 seed Jannik Sinner looms in this section of the draw as a potential fourth-round opponent. At Roland Garros this year, Bublik lost to Sinner in the quarterfinals—the Kazakh’s best Slam showing—then got his revenge on grass in Halle. But before another rematch happens, Bublik will have to beat the winner of the match between Lorenzo Sonego, ranked No. 46, and wild card Tristan Schoolkate, ranked No. 96.
MATCH POINT: Bublik’s serving stats were especially strong today. He won 95% of the points behind his first serve and hammered 16 aces (to just three double faults). And, perhaps to the disappointment of his fans, he hit zero of his patented underarm serves.
