{"id":10701,"date":"2018-11-12T11:30:31","date_gmt":"2018-11-12T16:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=10701"},"modified":"2018-11-13T21:49:42","modified_gmt":"2018-11-14T02:49:42","slug":"nitto-atp-finals-preview-prediction-kei-nishikori-vs-kevin-anderson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2018\/11\/12\/nitto-atp-finals-preview-prediction-kei-nishikori-vs-kevin-anderson\/","title":{"rendered":"Nitto ATP Finals Preview &#038; Prediction: Kei Nishikori vs Kevin Anderson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is pretty much a straight shootout for a spot in the semifinals of the Nitto ATP Finals. Kevin Anderson produced a very solid display in his opening match to down Dominic Thiem in straight sets. While I felt the Austrian was slowly growing into the match, especially in that second set tie break, I was very impressed by Anderson&#8217;s\u00a0overall performance and he absolutely deserved to win that match. With that victory he is 12-2 in indoor matches this season. Of those two losses, one was inflicted just two weeks ago in Paris by his next opponent in London.<\/p>\n<p>Kei Nishikori opened his London campaign in style by beating 6-time ATP Finals Champion Roger Federer, also in straight sets. Take nothing away from Nishikori&#8211;who was decisive on the important points&#8211;I felt Federer&#8217;s level was well below par, especially if you compare the last time he was on court in Paris-Bercy. That Nishikori win has completely changed the complexity of Group Lleyton Hewitt because Federer is no longer the favorite to qualify, in top spot at least.<\/p>\n<p>This will be a fourth meeting between Nishikori and Anderson in the space of three months. They both traded wins in the indoors of Vienna (Anderson won 6-3 7-6), and Paris Masters (Nishikori won 6-4 6-4).<br \/>\n<a id=\"sAaODwZXSylyR5HP_7Cu5Q\" class=\"gie-single\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1060256288\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'sAaODwZXSylyR5HP_7Cu5Q',sig:'NI2fHAmiEe9ZYs1q0QFGg7MOAQs9SK5X8av-e5La35I=',w:'594px',h:'387px',items:'1060256288',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><br \/>\n<strong>Prediction:<\/strong> This is a hard one to call, especially playing back-to-back to back against each other. I was more impressed by Anderson than Nishikori in their opening matches to be honest. But the South African is going to come up against a better returner than Thiem. Nishikori will ask a lot of questions on the Anderson serve. I think both players very much know this is as good an opportunity to secure passage to the semis. Nishikori has a better head-to-head record against Anderson since this is a match up that does not excite the South African because Nishikori will put more balls back in play.<\/p>\n<p><em>Pick: Nishikori in 3<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Main Photo:<br \/>\n<a id=\"YtrMUwvoQLV0R8jdimrMww\" class=\"gie-single\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1060368178\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'YtrMUwvoQLV0R8jdimrMww',sig:'bQvsqjGDaAv7JOYa6L3HgFfxSAmM3sdbrp3iFD0bFW8=',w:'594px',h:'410px',items:'1060368178',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is pretty much a straight shootout for a spot in the semifinals of the Nitto ATP Finals. Kevin Anderson produced a very solid display in his opening match to down Dominic Thiem in straight sets. While I felt the Austrian was slowly growing into the match, especially in that second set tie break, I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2341,"featured_media":10710,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2,69],"tags":[2475,146,1115,3980,2373,2369],"class_list":["post-10701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atp","category-featured","category-predictions","tag-federer","tag-kei-nishikori","tag-kevin-anderson","tag-nitto-atp-finals","tag-tennis-picks","tag-tennis-predictions"],"modified_by":"Yesh Ginsburg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}