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ATP CUP

January 6, 2020

Marin Cilic

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

M. CILIC/K. Zuk

7-6, 6-4

Team Croatia - 1

Team Poland - 0

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. Obviously two for two. How happy are you to get through against a guy who had nothing to lose?
MARIN CILIC: It's good. I mean, good match. Again, I have to say that the level was very good again. Good serving.

Today, you know, if I have to pick some things that I need to do better, it's just converting breakpoints. I had a lot of them. In the first set, Love-40, three breakpoints, three set points at 5-4, and then a couple occasions in the second set, too.

But otherwise, I felt that the level was quite good. I was being aggressive.

On the other side, he played well. I have to say I never played him, never saw him play, and he was off the ground really, really good, aggressive.

You know, with these kind of conditions here, he was feeding off the base well, and really on the run he was hitting well. So really a lot of credit to him for playing a good match.

But I had to stay mentally in the match, really focused, and finished the match in those two sets.

Q. One of the aspects of this event, you're guaranteed three matches and potentially more if you guys move on. Is that a nice building block for you to build confidence heading into the year?
MARIN CILIC: Absolutely. I feel that the event is doing great, playing three cities. It just shows that there is a lot of differentiation in the crowd, a lot of support from all different, you know, communities, and it was a pleasure to play these two matches.

For sure, another one to play is going to be great and just to build that form up, which we all need in the beginning of the season.

Q. Borna said a couple of days ago when he played Dominic that you mentioned you had seen some stuff on the tablet you mentioned to him. I don't think I saw you today use it too much. How much do you enjoy that, and what do you look for?
MARIN CILIC: Yeah, I used it when Borna was playing. Well, you can see a little bit of tactics and strategies that one or the other player is using. You know, it's how you use the statistics.

You know, there are many things that are out there, many numbers, but it's just picking out things that can actually help out. And on those couple of things I tried to pass the message to Borna what Dominic was doing in that particular match, and just hopefully it helped.

But for me, today it was a little bit straightforward. In terms of getting into the situations, I felt I knew what I needed to do during the match, so I was not using it too much. I don't know if my captain or teammates were using it during my match. You know, I got few advices from them but didn't see them.

Q. What's your feeling about the conditions that you are likely to encounter in Melbourne? Is there a general feeling amongst the players, as well? I know it's a couple of weeks away, but with the fires, I mean, what's your camp telling you? Are there ways you prepare? Are there concerns, et cetera?
MARIN CILIC: More or less it's every single year, you know. Melbourne is very tricky with the conditions. It can be from 40-degrees day to 20-degrees day. And even on a couple of occasions, when was it, two years ago, during the day was 40 degrees, and then you get into the night when it's already 18, 17. So you've got to be ready for everything.

For those extreme conditions, nobody is basically prepared. Most of us are preparing in Europe or something like that. You know, basically few of the guys from Europe do come here to Australia to prepare to get ready for that extreme weather.

But body-wise, I'm feeling good, physically well. You've got to be mentally ready to, you know, sustain those difficult situations when they do come for three, four hours. But I feel physically I'm feeling good.

Q. But with the fires in particular, you know, is there anything extra that your team is saying? Are there any concerns about breathing or what you might experience down there at all?
MARIN CILIC: No, no, not really. We are, you know, not thinking about that too much. We are definitely feeling bad and just hoping that the fires are going to stop and that it's going to rain very soon so that it helps everyone.

But otherwise, I think that the tournament is, both in Australian Open and here, are going to take care of the players, you know, if there are going to be any issues.

Q. What about yourself? How are you feeling? 2019, there were things happening in your life and changes, all that. There was a bit of a slide in the rankings. But overall, how do you feel now as you look ahead to 2020?
MARIN CILIC: I feel motivated. I feel that, you know, 2019 was a season that I could use to learn some new things.

It was just a little bit of different aspects into the season and just few different things that happened to me during the season that I didn't experience before during my career, you know, having definitely a difficult form throughout most of the season.

All those things are good motivation for me to get stronger and now to push a little bit more further into 2020. I had good time off now in the offseason, trained well. I believe this event can definitely set the things up nicely for the rest of the season.

You know, I'm expecting, you know, with my wife, we are expecting a child, and that's going to happen. Hopefully everything is going to go well in February and a new thing and could lead to a lot of good positives in 2020.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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