Marin Cilic: The tennis has not run away from me

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Marin Cilic, 34, says he never doubted he would rediscover his form and start making great results again. Cilic, who started the 2022 season ranked at No 30 in the world, made back-to-back ATP semifinals in Adelaide 1 and Adelaide 2 in January.

After the Australian Summer, Cilic hit a rough stretch as he was exiting tournaments early pretty much wherever he went. Then, Cilic impressively made the French Open semifinal before losing to Casper Ruud. In the rest of the year, Cilic also made the semifinal at the Queen's Club and he also finished as runner-up to Novak Djokovic in the Tel Aviv Open final.

Cilic, a former world No 3, finished the season ranked at No 17 in the world.

Cilic on still playing at a high level

"I would say that in general the tennis has not run away from me. It’s just the feeling of putting everything together and generally when you watch tennis at a high level it seems quite simple and then you come to some stages where it become more difficult to put those things together, but for me I never doubted that I’d find playing good tennis," Cilic told the ATP Tennis Radio Podcast.

On the same podcast, 32-year-old Dan Evans was asked to explain what's stopping him from making the next step in his career. Evans, who is ranked at No 27 in the world, achieved a career-high ranking of No 22 last year. "I look at these tournaments differently to a lot of these top guys, I have to have a lot of things fall right, but reaching the Montreal semi-finals shows I can get to the latter stages of these tournaments if I do certain things and play the right tennis.

I can improve and that’s why we’re on the practice courts each day and it’s just about tinkering," Evans said. It remains to be seen how will two experienced players, Cilic and Evans, perform in 2023.