DAVIS CUP FINALS

December 3, 2021

Vedran Martic

Marin Cilic

Mate Pavic

Nikola Mektic

Team Croatia

Press Conference

MEKTIC-PAVIC/Djokovic-Krajinovic

7-5, 6-1

Croatia - 2

Serbia - 1

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. Captain, it's good to have Marin Cilic in the team, but also a great doubles, against especially Serbia?

VEDRAN MARTIC: Of course. I have best players in the world, so I don't want to change anybody. I have perfect players (laughter).

(Team applauding.)

Q. I understand that once you beat Italy, everything comes easy.

MARIN CILIC: We are expecting two questions, please, first and then second (smiling).

Q. Anyway, Gojo is the hero of the team or Pavic and Mektic because we are used to them to win all the time so they're not making any surprise when they win? Gojo goes on and makes surprises every time. Three wins against 60, 30, 20. Marin, I don't see anything. What about you?

MARIN CILIC: Was that second question or third? Which (laughter)?

VEDRAN MARTIC: I really happy how everybody played, so I don't want now to say. Doubles win, Marin lost match. Okay, he played against No. 1 in the world and played good match.

Even Nino Serdarusic deserve everything. I don't want now to say Gojo won and is great for us.

Q. Mate and Nikola, with the change of the team for the doubles from Cacic to Filip, did you prepare something tactically? Did you just focus on your strengths?

MATE PAVIC: Me personally, I was a little bit surprised that they did change that. I was expecting Cacic to play. They did that switch, so they put in Cacic.

We know them very good. We know Cacic, we know Krajinovic. We did adapt a little bit. The tactic were a bit different.

Again, the last two matches we playing great, focusing on our strength. We serving very good. I think we didn't lose one serve in the four matches that we played now. We start from that, then we adapt to the guys, to the opponents.

We did adapt a little bit, so that was it.

Q. Marin, you don't know who you're going to be coming up against in the final, Russia or Germany. Could you look ahead and talk about if you were to play Russia, then Germany.

MARIN CILIC: For us at the moment is the time also to have a nice evening, great celebration. The team did incredible job making to the final. Third one in five years. This is something exceptional and doesn't happen very often even in these last 20 years of Davis Cup or even more that something like this happen.

For us, we have great atmosphere in the team. We're enjoying being in the Davis Cup. Everybody is playing great tennis. The final being Germany or Russia, both great quality teams. Germany little bit more versatile in terms of great doubles team, also very solid the singles guys, playing really good in the indoors.

For Russian team, probably the strongest team there is at the Davis Cup. Going against them is absolutely difficult task. But still final is a final. We have our own strengths. We are enjoying to be here. We're going to have great joy playing in the final again.

Q. Marin, you've reached the final of the Davis Cup in the old format and the new format. Could you compare the two.

MARIN CILIC: For both '16 and '18 we had our ties, semifinal ties, in Croatia, so that was fantastic. Atmosphere was incredible. When you make it at home to the final, it's huge. So we enjoyed it and we felt this huge emotions from the people, from everyone.

Over here it's a long tournament, it's a long stretch. We came to Turin two weeks ago, preparing, playing matches. We had a little bit of you can call it tough schedule playing Wednesday and then Sunday. No, Thursday and then Sunday. It was also adapting to that, adapting to this new format.

Every single match counts a lot, so you have to really be at the top of your game. All of us did as much as we could to make it to the final.

Q. About the doubles, for the next match, normally you are strong favorites against everybody, probably also next time. Today you had to save just one breakpoint. Italy no breakpoints. I don't know about the previous.

NIKOLA MEKTIC: And the previous one also.

Q. For the doubles, do you think it's stronger doubles played by two singles players like the Russian have, whoever will play, or the Germans who have a doubles pair that is used to play doubles? What is the most difficult pair to play?

NIKOLA MEKTIC: I normally don't like to wish for an opponent. I really have respect for every opponent.

In this particular case Germans have a really, really good doubles teams, one of the top doubles guys in the world. They're not a team, but they obviously know each other very well. They play well.

Russians, on the other hand, have two exceptional singles players who play doubles often actually. So in this case, I don't know. Me personally, maybe yes, I prefer to play against singles guys, but singles guys who maybe don't play that often.

Rublev and Karatsev, whoever plays there, I think that's their best team. They definitely play a lot during the year. They are exceptional singles players, but they are very used to doubles, so that makes them a very, very dangerous team.

MATE PAVIC: Always diplomatic (smiling).

I agree with him. It's just a different matchup between the singles guys and the doubles specialists. Obviously I think we only played Australia kind of half-half, a doubles guy and singles guy, the rest were all singles guys.

It's a different matchup, but I would definitely prefer to play singles guys.