Lucas Pouille served at 3-5 in the third set in Lille, in front of a mostly French crowd of 22,000, and fell behind 0-40. He saved two match points. On the third, Marin Cilic finished it with a lob. The 7-6(3), 6-3, 6-3 win on 25 November 2018 gave Croatia a 3-1 lead over France and its second Davis Cup title, in the last final played in the competition’s traditional format. Cilic did not face a break point. “It’s not every day that you become a world champion,” he said on court, draped in a Croatian flag.
Two years earlier he had played the same rubber in the final against Argentina, with Croatia a point ahead, led Juan Martin del Potro by two sets to love, and lost in five. Argentina took the title. This weekend, at 37, Cilic leads Croatia against Germany in Halle with a place in the Final 8 at stake.
New York, 2014
Cilic won his only major at the 2014 US Open as the 14th seed. In the semifinals he beat Roger Federer 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 in an hour and 45 minutes, with 13 aces and 43 winners, according to Agence France-Presse. The Associated Press described him using every bit of his 1.98m frame for stinging serves and flat groundstrokes. “Marin played great and I maybe didn’t catch my best day,” Federer said.
He beat Kei Nishikori 6-3, 6-3, 6-3 in the final, with 17 aces, the first Grand Slam final since the 2005 Australian Open without Federer, Djokovic or Nadal. He was the first Croatian man to win a major since Goran Ivanisevic at Wimbledon in 2001.
A year earlier he had missed the US Open while serving a four-month suspension after testing positive for a stimulant, which he said came from over-the-counter glucose tablets, the Associated Press and Sports Illustrated reported at the time.
Two finals and No. 3
Cilic reached two more major finals, at Wimbledon in 2017 and at the Australian Open in 2018, and lost both to Federer. After Melbourne he rose to a career-high No. 3, on 29 January 2018. He returned to the last four of a major at Roland Garros in 2022, where Casper Ruud beat him in the semifinals. At the US Open the same year he led Carlos Alcaraz, the eventual champion, by two sets to one in the fourth round and could not close it out, according to the ATP Tour. His US Open record stands at 41-14. He also won an Olympic silver medal in men’s doubles at the Tokyo Games.
No. 777
Two knee operations cost him most of 2023 and 2024. He arrived at the Hangzhou Open in September 2024 on a wildcard, ranked 777th and 0-4 in tour-level matches that season, according to Tennis.com. He dropped two sets all week, beat Brandon Nakashima in the semifinals and Zhang Zhizhen 7-6(5), 7-6(5) in a final with no breaks of serve, and became the lowest-ranked champion in ATP Tour history, according to the ATP Tour. The previous record was Lleyton Hewitt’s, who won Adelaide in 1998 ranked 550th. “I lost my ranking and I didn’t play too much,” Cilic said. It was his 21st tour-level title, in a 13th different season.
Playing style
Cilic is a right-hander with a two-handed backhand. The Associated Press summed up his 2014 semifinal as serve and flat groundstrokes from a 1.98m frame, and the numbers from the two best weekends of his career fit that description: 13 aces against Federer in the 2014 semifinal, 17 against Nishikori in the final, and no service break conceded by Croatia in any of its three singles rubbers in Lille, as he pointed out afterwards.
Grand Slam record
- Australian Open: final (2018)
- Roland Garros: semifinals (2022)
- Wimbledon: final (2017)
- US Open: champion (2014)
Season snapshot — 18 September 2026
Ranked No. 81 as of 31 August 2026, with a career high of No. 3. He withdrew from the US Open with an injury before his first-round match against Andrey Rublev, the third time in four years he has missed the tournament, after winning one match in Montreal. He leads a Croatian team captained by Ivan Dodig, with Dino Prizmic, Mate Pavic and Nikola Mektic, against Germany at the Heristo Arena in Halle on 19 and 20 September. The winner goes to the Final 8 in Bologna in November. Our round preview has every tie, and how the Davis Cup works explains the format. He turns 38 on 28 September.
This snapshot is dated and will change. The career record above does not.
