Marin Cilic took on Carlos Alcaraz on Monday night in the fourth round of the US Open, and there was tons of focus on the Croatian’s foot positioning on serves.
Cilic went up 2-0 to start the first set, but the announcing team of Patrick McEnroe and James Blake couldn’t stop focusing on his foot.
Cilic kept positioning his left foot on the baseline to start his serves.
🎾🇺🇸😎CILIC serve technique is interesting with his foot on the line…. #USOpen 😂🥳#rmclive pic.twitter.com/ngRafRwqlh
— LegosBo (@LegosBo) September 6, 2022
https://twitter.com/jonscott9/status/1566980359866273794
Cilic kept getting away with that positioning until finally being called for a foot fault later in the set. After that, Cilic moved back slightly so that his front foot was not on the line when he got prepared to serve.
There was some confusion over whether Cilic was committing a foot fault. The rules state that one cannot touch the baseline with their foot “during the service motion.”
The Foot Fault rule
With Cilic, depends on when we define the start of the "service motion". Definitely not contacting the ball with his foot on the line but appears he is starting his toss with it there pic.twitter.com/ZvHEd4PFEX
— Christopher Clarey 🇺🇸 🇫🇷 🇪🇸 (@christophclarey) September 6, 2022
The question is whether you consider it to be part of his motion when Cilic begins to rock backwards for his serve.
To me, there is zero doubt that Cilic was constantly foot-faulting on his serves. All he had to do was move back by half an inch and there wouldn’t have been any issues or questions.
Alcaraz took the first set 6-4. He entered the match with a 2-1 head-to-head lead on Cilic, with both wins coming this year at Masters 1000 events.
