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He may not have won, but Marin Cilic made a very welcome return to action on home soil in Umag, Croatia on Monday, falling to Flavio Cobolli in the first round of the clay-court event, 6-4, 6-3.

It was Cilic’s first match since January 4th—201 days ago—when he beat Roberto Carballes Baena in his opening match in Pune, India. But he suffered a right knee injury there, withdrew from his next match, soon underwent surgery and was out for six-and-a-half months.

But in Umag he returned to one of his favorite events, where he not only made his ATP debut as a 16-year-old in 2005, but where he also captured the first ATP clay-court title of his career in 2012.

“It feels fantastic. Really positive feelings after more than six months of being away from the tour,” Cilic told ATPTennis.com coming in.

“This is the tournament where I started my career back in 2005 and it’s sort of now [come back full circle] to make this… comeback very positive. To do it here again is definitely a special feeling.”

There were definitely flashes of Cilic’s best on Monday. Even after he went down a break midway through the first set, he had a break point in Cobolli’s 5-4 service game that would’ve put things back on serve. But after a brief rain delay at 6-4, 3-1 the Italian kept his focus and eventually closed the match out after an hour and 51 minutes.

Cilic signed a slew of autographs on his way off the court.

“It’s such an honor to share the court with him,” Cobolli said of Cilic in his on-court interview after the match. “I really enjoyed this match tonight, and now I’m ready for the next one on Wednesday.”

Cilic won the US Open in 2014 and has reached two more Grand Slam finals, at Wimbledon in 2017 and the Australian Open in 2018.

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The knee injury lay-off has certainly hurt Cilic’s ranking. The former world No. 3 came into 2023 ranked No. 17 but is now down at No. 100. The biggest drops came in June, first after Roland Garros (where he was defending semifinal points and fell from No. 22 to No. 65) and then a week later (when semifinal points from Queen’s Club dropped off and he fell from No. 65 to No. 100). He was actually almost back in the Top 10 last year, going as high as No. 13 in October.

The summer hard-court season has been one of Cilic’s favorite stretches, though. This is the time of year that he’s won the two biggest titles of his career, one Grand Slam title at the US Open in 2014 and one Masters 1000 title at Cincinnati in 2016.

He nearly made another deep run at Flushing Meadows last summer, pushing Carlos Alcaraz to five sets in the fourth round—the Spaniard went on to win his first Grand Slam title there.

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