Marin Cilic Supports Wimbledon’s Seeding System

Published 06/29/2019, 9:29 AM EDT

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After Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic bleated upon Roger Federer’s second seed spot at Wimbledon Championships 2019, the 13th seed, Marin Cilic shared his opinion regarding the traditional seeding system at Wimbledon.

The Croatian US Open champion feels that the formula used by the tournament organisers (which partially takes the previous grass court performances of players and then determine the Wimbledon seeds) is certainly beneficial for players like him. This calculation refrains Marin Cilic from meeting opponents seeded higher than him in the first three rounds.

“The thing is it’s been on for years and they do use points from previous events, from previous years,” Marin Cilic said. “So in my own case, it helped me be in the group of 13-16. I moved from 17 into that group, which definitely helps out in avoiding higher seeds until the fourth round so in my own case it’s good. It’s been a tradition here and it’s difficult to say, you have positives and negatives about it.”

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Wimbledon 2017 finalist, Marin Cilic will be opening against, the unseeded player Adrian Mannarino and his first seeded opponent might be the 18th seed, Nikoloz Basilashvili in the third round and then followed by the third seed, Rafael Nadal in the pre-quarterfinals of Wimbledon Championships 2019

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“It’s definitely not as it was in the past when you have the clay courters and they’re ranked maybe top-10 and they’re having difficulty to go through one or two rounds,” Marin Cilic continued. “Now, courts are much more playable, you can stay from the baseline, the bounce is really nice almost like on the hard courts, there aren’t many bad bounces.”

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His comparison with the clay court major seemed to be coherent. Considering just the results from the previous three French Opens, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga was seeded amongst the top ten seeds and he met with a third round retirement in 2016.

The same year the tenth seed, Marin Cilic exited from the first round. In 2017, tenth seed Alexander Zverev was out from the first. And in 2018, the fourth seed, Grigor Dimitrov and tenth seed, Pablo Carreno Busta dealt with third-round losses.

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“Everyone is playing well, everyone is hitting well. You see the top-32 guys, they all play well on hard courts, clay, it doesn’t matter so from that case I agree it could just stay the way it is in the rankings,” Marin Cilic added.

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Mahalakshmi Murali

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Mahalakshmi Murali joined EssentiallySports in 2018 as a tennis author and has gone on to pen more than 1800 engaging articles, probing into various aspects of the sport and its illustrious players. With her expertise on the sport, Mahalakshmi has interviewed stalwarts from the sport such as Serena WIlliams’ coach Patrick Mouratoglou and Kevin Anderson’s physio, Carlos Costa. Equipped with her vast experience and a keen understanding of the sport, Mahalakshmi now co-heads the tennis department.
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