Croatia’s Marin Cilic, a former top ten player, gave credit to coach Goran Ivanisevic for a more improved game. Ivanisevic is a former Wimbledon champion.
“To simplify. Throw the ball in the air and hit it,” Cilic said. “For me before, I was a lot thinking about the serve. To be more relaxed, nothing unusual. But we worked a lot on it, and it seems that it fit in the right place. We worked a lot also on volleys, and of course game at the net where I had the most space to improve. Last few years I was not doing too well at the net and I wasn’t playing as offensive as I would want to, the way I would need to play, like a taller player, to have shorter points and put more pressure on the other guy.”
Cilic was forced to take a four-month break last season due to a suspension sanctioned to him by the ITF. It stemmed from him testing positive for a banned stimulant (nikethamide).
“Goran showed me already a lot of things,” Cilic said after his match win over Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov in Brisbane International this week.
“I feel my game is improving. Goran say all the things that he went through many more times than I did already in my career he can show me and tell me in front, ‘Okay, be careful of this.’ He’s going to be one step ahead of me in some kind of situations. I think that’s huge help when you have something like that, especially someone like him who was Top 10 for many years in his career, played many times in finals of Grand Slams. I think he knows the game and he knows what I need to improve on. I think he’s the right guy to help me,” he added.
