{"id":46293,"date":"2022-02-06T22:16:17","date_gmt":"2022-02-07T03:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=46293"},"modified":"2022-02-06T22:16:17","modified_gmt":"2022-02-07T03:16:17","slug":"challenger-tour-weekly-recap-nishioka-vs-stricker-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2022\/02\/06\/challenger-tour-weekly-recap-nishioka-vs-stricker-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Challenger Tour Weekly Recap: Nishioka vs Stricker &#8230; Again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It was the same final for the second week in a row in the States as Yoshihito Nishioka and Dominic Stricker battled for a Challenger title again, this time at Cleveland. Read back on this week&#8217;s action:<\/p>\n<h4>Cleveland<\/h4>\n<p><strong>Yoshihito Nishioka<\/strong> came back to the ATP Challenger Tour after over two years in <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2022\/01\/30\/challenger-tour-weekly-recap-vasek-pospisil-and-yoshihito-nishioka-ending-their-slumps\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Columbus the week before<\/a>, taking the title. Possible fatigue was always going to be a concern, but the Japanese pulled through tight three-setters against Yasutaka Uchiyama and college tennis legend William Blumberg. As such, he arrived in the final at Cleveland on a nine-match win streak. Awaiting him there was a very familiar foe.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Dominic Stricker<\/strong> lost to Nishioka 2-6 4-6 in the Columbus final, struggling to hit through the court as the Japanese absorbed and redirected pace extremely well. The 2020 Roland Garros boys&#8217; singles champion doesn&#8217;t match up well against such opponents but he still impressed by finding two consecutive deep runs, something that didn&#8217;t really come easy to him in the past. The Swiss was also taken to a deciding set twice (by Emilio Nava and Michael Mmoh).<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1322838870\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 66.66667% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/1322838870?et=u6aPGz88QHZV3YcLkGz81A&amp;tld=com&amp;sig=_NVsF80dNdau5az8btB1PZa_ZYJlvaG_xXdnEc1rkHA=&amp;caption=true&amp;ver=1\" width=\"594\" height=\"396\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The youngster&#8217;s game has very little to do with patience, he&#8217;s simply always willing to move forward and looking for a big strike, whether it&#8217;s a forehand or backhand or just a well-placed serve. Compared to their Columbus final, Stricker was going for low-margin attacking balls even more, sometimes showing his dominance even right off the return. He also withstood some key longer rallies and after saving a crucial breakpoint at 4-4, landed the only break of the opening set to come closer to the championship.<\/p>\n<p>Nishioka had to a medical time out down 1-4 in the second and his movement was clearly hampered by a lower back issue. He commendably tried his best to keep fighting but couldn&#8217;t really try to reach some of Stricker&#8217;s bigger forehands when being pulled wide. The 19-year-old took the title 7-5 6-1, winning his 2nd Challenger title (<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2021\/03\/29\/challenger-tour-weekly-recap-next-gen-is-coming-as-stricker-and-bergs-claim-titles\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Lugano 2021<\/a>). It also allows him to break the top 200.<\/p>\n<p>Stricker&#8217;s next tournament will likely be the Pau Challenger in two weeks&#8217; time, while Nishioka is supposed to compete in the main draw at an ATP event in Dallas, but his appearance could be under a question mark given the physical issues.<\/p>\n<h4>Challenger Tour magic:<\/h4>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Liam Broady with the tweener lob!<br \/>\ud83d\udcf7: <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ATPChallenger?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@ATPChallenger<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/zllcpGhnBs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/zllcpGhnBs<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Damian Kust (@damiankust) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/damiankust\/status\/1488574584882348035?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">February 1, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h4>Events held next week:<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>Bengaluru Open (Challenger 80, hard)<\/li>\n<li>Challenger Cherbourg &#8211; La Manche (Challenger 80, indoor hard)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Another tournament was supposed to be held in Bayamon, Puerto Rico, but had to be cancelled due to COVID-19 restrictions.<\/p>\n<h4>Top 100 players in action:<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>Jiri Vesely, Stefano Travaglia (Bengaluru)<\/li>\n<li>Benjamin Bonzi (Cherbourg)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>First-round matches to watch:<\/h4>\n<p>Bengaluru<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>(7) Elias Ymer vs Cem Ilkel<\/li>\n<li>Jay Clarke vs Chun-Hsin Tseng<\/li>\n<li>Jason Kubler vs (3) Aleksandar Vukic<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Cherbourg<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Gregoire Barrere vs Jack Draper<\/li>\n<li>(WC) Harold Mayot vs Quentin Halys<\/li>\n<li>Mikhail Kukushkin vs (3) Tomas Machac<\/li>\n<li>Kacper \u017buk vs (2) Pierre-Hugues Herbert<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was the same final for the second week in a row in the States as Yoshihito Nishioka and Dominic Stricker battled for a Challenger title again, this time at Cleveland. Read back on this week&#8217;s action: Cleveland Yoshihito Nishioka came back to the ATP Challenger Tour after over two years in Columbus the week [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2968,"featured_media":46331,"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":[8552,2],"tags":[17137,1221,3188,8560,10887,15779,2665,835],"class_list":["post-46293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atp-challenger-tour","category-featured","tag-2022-atp-challenger-tour","tag-atp-challenger","tag-atp-challenger-tour","tag-challenger-tour-recap","tag-cleveland-challenger","tag-dominic-stricker","tag-liam-broady","tag-yoshihito-nishioka"],"modified_by":"Steen Kirby","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46293","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\/2968"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}