Kei Nishikori has come a long way since he was nicknamed “Project 45”, a name given to him in the hopes he would reach a higher ranking than former Japanese tennis player Shuzo Matsuoka. Kei has moved leaps and bounds since then, reaching a career high world number four in the ATP Emirates Rankings system earlier this week, earning him the right of being called Japan’s greatest ever tennis player.
Kei made a name for himself and the Japanese Tennis scene back in 2012 when he won the Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Tournament, which hails as a 500 on the ATP tournament scale. The prestigious tournament has been won by the likes of Pete Sampras, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray; all Grand Slam winners. After failing to defend his title in 2013 Kei made up for this by winning the title again last year, beating Milos Raonic, a player who has always caused Kei problems throughout their matches, given the two have a head-to-head similar to that of Djokovic and Murray.
Kei has had another solid start to the year, winning in Memphis, defeating Kevin Anderson for the title as well as coming runner-up to David Ferrer in Acapulco last week. Kei currently has fourteen wins and three losses under his belt so far in 2015 and with a quarter-final showing at the Australian Open it looks as though Kei could have another great year on tour.
It was 2014 which really saw the making of the 25 year old, with his biggest achievement coming in August when he reached his first Grand Slam final only to lose to Marin Cilic. However, he beat Novak Djokovic along the way, a massive accomplishment in itself. Not only did Nishikori manage to get to his first Grand Slam final, he also had a personal best win-loss ratio of 54-14 and won four titles that year. Kei showed good form in the Masters 1000 events, reaching the semi-final stages on two separate occasions and finishing runner-up to Rafael Nadal in Madrid, despite winning the first set. All of Kei’s hard work in 2014 paid off as he qualified for the Barclays ATP World tour finals, a competition reserved for the eight best singles players of the year. He made it to the semi-final, losing to eventual champion Novak Djokovic.
“Project 45” has become a distant memory for Nishikori; he has accomplished so much since winning in Japan back in 2012, yet the need for a big name in Japanese tennis did not start with Kei and will certainly not end there. The tennis bug hit big in Japan during the career of former world number 46 player, Shuzo Matsuoka. Shuzo had everything that Japanese tennis fans wanted. He was tall, with a strong athletic build and good-looking, however it was his victories over former world number ones Pete Sampras and Stefan Edberg that started getting tennis noticed in Japan. As well as his wins against top players, it was his 1995 quarter-final loss at Wimbledon to Sampras that sparked the tennis boom in Japan.
Matsuoka inspired an entire nation to take an interest in tennis, and now that hope for a great success story falls on the shoulders of Kei Nishikori. Kei has always been a player with great promise. His athletic ability is second to none and his on-court speed could match players like Molfils or Murray. Nishikori has the backing of an entire nation and and surely it is just a matter of time before the history books are rewritten to include Japan’s first Grand Slam winner.
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