New Delhi: Marin Cilic won his maiden Grand Slam on Monday by beating 10th seed Kei Nishikori in straight sets of the US Open final.
The Croatian dominated the proceedings since the beginning, and hardly gave the Japanese any chance to make a comeback and sealed the match 6-3. 6-3, 6-3. The scoreline is enough to understand, how lopsided the men's singles final was at the Arthur Ashe Stadium.
En route to the final, the 14th seeded Cilic beat Illya Marchenko, Kevin Anderson, Gilles Simon, to reach the quarter-finals, where he got the better of Tomáš Berdych to reach the next level.
But in the semis-finals he had to beat the 17-time grand glam winner Roger Federer, who was looking all set to take his major tally to 18. But, the Croatian thrashed FedEx in straight sets, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 to book his maiden berth in the finals of a major.
Cilic, who missed the US Open last season due to doping ban has proved that he has the potential to give the 'big four' a run for their money.
But it would be too early to see him as the next big thing in men's tennis.
This year we saw two players out of the 'big four' league winning the grand slams. First it was Stan Wawrinka, who won the opening major of the year (Australian Open) and now Cilic claimed the season ending US Open.
Apart from these two other players, the likes of Grigor Dimitrov, Milos Raonic, Kei Nishikori and Jo Wilfried Tsonga have also shown promise to be future Grand Slam winners.
So one thing is sure that in the future majors we will have a plenty of players in the men's singles, who will only make life tougher for the 'big four' to keep challenging them for the most coveted prize.
(Z)