Six games, three breadsticks, 17 winners and 55 unforced errors are all the US Open champion has to his name in the two hours and 10 minutes spent in London's famous dome. Cilic is all but done for the year, his pants twice pulled down in front of 18,000  people. Twice he has also been asked about the sadness, the shame, and the embarrassment these losses have brought on him. And yet, from his words, you wouldn't know any of it.

“Yeah, it's a little bit disappointing to play like this.  I was not expecting it.  But I feel a little bit tired, and my body feels a little bit tired on the court,” came a hilariously understated reaction.

“It seems that the things that I'm doing are all basically going in a wrong direction.  Especially with these guys at this kind of level, even small mistakes, or if you're not at your best performances, the outcome is not going to be going in your favor.”

A little bit disappointing, the man says. As if he had just lost at a lowly tournament in the shadow of a more meaningful battle to come, or stepped in a puddle that sprayed a touch of splash on his nice jeans. Not hit six winners and 20 unforced errors against Djokovic to escape with a pitiful two games, then 11 winners and 30 unforced errors against Berdych with only four more to his tally.

The stats keepers in London have shown themselves to be kind and merciful people, but such has been the horror of Cilic's performances that even in their generosity, the US Open champion has still produced the kind of winner-error ratios that will strike fear in the hearts of the most unfeeling.

His performances in color and context are even more harrowing. When asked about the peculiarities of this week, Roger Federer was assertive in pinpointing the slow courts as his prime reason for the lopsided scores. The big servers have little chance, he said, and it's the swift movers will always benefit on these courts.

Right Federer is, but for a big server to serve well, they are actually required to, well, serve well. Instead, the first serve that blew every man, woman, and child away in New York has landed little over 50% of the time for Cilic here, and only because he forced himself to cut pace off in order to land at least a few inside the box. The serve has been inconsistent and imprecise, and it isn't even the worst shot of the week.

That award goes to the Cilic forehand. So improved and so majestic a few months ago, it has seemingly morphed back to type and then well beyond, looking like the single worst stroke around. Error after sorry forehand error – wide, long, netted, and shanks in equal measure. He has barely placed a forehand between the lines all week. The other wing hasn't been much better.

Cilic is hardly a reliable narrator when it comes to his injuries, as we found out during last year's anti-doping saga. Many assumed his withdrawal from Paris was him choosing to skip a lesser event in favor of London. If it was, the decision has been a disaster of epic proportions. But there seems little reason for him to have misled, and his attitude to these losses certainly tells of someone who was vaguely aware that his lack of preparation wouldn't be a help to him.

At the same time, this could be a touch of things to come. There's no guarantee that Cilic's victory in New York will galvanize him into a greater player, or to anything resembling an effective player in the Masters 1000 events. Many people expect the world from tennis players, and even more still from grand champions. The act of not backing up a victory or a title is seemingly worthy of capital punishment. We tend forget what many of the less glorious Grand Slam champions and finalists were doing with their lives and careers before the Big Four strutted onto the scene.

All year, Stan Wawrinka has incessantly spoken about the effect his victory in Melbourne had on how he receives his losses, only raising the standards he held for himself to new heights. The victory, he has said, meant he expects even more from himself and is even more troubled after poor losses. Cilic, meanwhile, cut a figure who believes the US Open title will soothe every ill and right every wrong.

Different strokes, different folks, different points of the season, and certainly different situations, but it's still an interesting contrast. Cilic's words perhaps reveal where he is in the world right now, aware of winding down the season. With every day, he moves ever closer to the point when he can sit back and kick both feet up. These shambolic losses are “a little bit disappointing”, but they have no bearing on his season. It's a problem that some of the top eight would probably kill to have.