Japanese super star Kei Nishikori confirms his entry at the Malaysian Open 2011 – Tennis News
Popular Japanese star Kei Nishikori has announced that he will be playing at the Malaysian Open this year. The event will take place from the 24th of September to the 2nd of October at the Putra Stadium, Bukit
Jalil.
World number 48 Kei, announced that he believed he was in a robust form to take on the series and was excited about the championships thus confirming his entry, he said, “I am looking forward to coming back to Kuala Lumpur and
hope to do better. Everyone was so nice to me before and I really appreciate this. It is always nice to go back to a tournament where you feel welcomed and comfortable”.
Although, this is not the first time Nishikori is playing, he made his debut on the hard court event in Kuala Lumpur tournament of 2010, however was unable to shine and lost in the first round to Marcos Baghdatis in a double bread
stick defeat.
Tournament director Nick Freyer was excited and said, “It is a wonderful opportunity to be able to welcome a player from Asia to the Malaysian Open and especially one who has shown such great maturity and determination, he has
incredible talent and it is tremendous for tennis in Asia to be able to see him playing”.
A frustrating turn of events took place in 2009 for the 21 year-old. As he took a serious injury to his right elbow which resulted in a surgery and was eventually sidelined for almost a year and also plummeted in his ranking.
This year he has seen new high’s in his career as he showed a tremendous improvement and consistency in his game. 21 year-old Japanese played several matches this year and was a quarterfinalist at Chennai, semi finalist at Delray
Beach and Eastbourne, and at Houston he defeated world class player Mardy Fish only to become the runner up by losing the final to Ryan Sweeting. In addition, he reached the third round of the Australian Open but lost to then world number 9 Fernando Verdasco.
He also got to play the then world number 1 Rafael Nadal in Miami but lost in straight sets of 4-6, 4-6. Moreover, this year he reached a career high ranking of 46 on the 2nd of May and with a year to date win-loss record of 21-14 he proved that
he has the ability to play on any surface.
Nishikori made his unveiling when he had won the ATP World Tour 250 title at Delray Beach, by defeating world number 12 James Blake in the final. He then became the second Japanese player to win a title and the first since 1992.
2008 was the lime light of his life as at the end of the year he was the youngest player to be ranked in the top 100.
Tags: