The return of Rafael Nadal absorbs all the light at the start of the 2024 tennis season, but another former Grand Slam winner, the Croatian Marin Cilic, is also trying to reconnect with the thread of his career after a blank year in 2023.

At 35, the former world No.3, crowned at the US Open in 2014, seriously injured his right knee at the very start of the 2023 season during the tournament in Pune, India. Operated, it took him twelve months to recover, twelve months during which he thought several times that his career was over.

The Croatian had however launched his 2023 season with good momentum, after returning to the Top 15 for the first time since 2019. His injury stopped everything. After his operation, he played only one match on the main circuit, in July at the Umag tournament, at home, defeated in two sets in the first round and returned to the convalescence box, his knee again in bulk.

“It was an interesting year that was interrupted at the very beginning,” he said in an interview with AFP before the start of the ATP 250 tournament in Hong Kong, where the tall Croatian server (1m98) makes his return to the courts.

“I had meniscus surgery and then had cartilage problems,” he says.

Falling to 674th place, two places behind Rafael Nadal who is participating in the ATP 250 tournament in Brisbane, Australia, Cilic was not favored by the draw in Hong Kong, where he will face the German Jan- Lennard Struff, 25th player in the world.

“Definitely a tough opponent,” said the Croatian. “We have known each other for many years and we are really friends. So it’s going to be a big challenge, a solid mission.”

Cilic’s first objective at the start of the year is to best prepare for the Australian Open (January 15-28), the first round of the Grand Slam that he almost won in 2018, losing in the final to Roger Federer after five epic sets.

“I had a break point at the start of the fifth set but, well, I let it pass. What I would say about this period and the months that preceded it is that it was undoubtedly the best of my career,” he recalls.

But the idea is not to set specific goals.

“I was lucky for many years not to have any serious injuries,” he says. The past year has changed him: “If I have the opportunity to play, I will be really happy. If not, if things go wrong or go wrong, well, it will be fine,” he notes.

This forced break from a professional career that began in 2005 also gave him time to think outside the framework of tennis.

“It was funny because I felt like I was a little more of a normal person than a tennis pro,” he says. “I was training and everything, but my mind was totally free from the circuit and at home, in the afternoons, I could spend time with my boys,” adds the father of two.

“Being away from the circuit gave me a different perspective, the idea that there is a different life.”