Tennis Star Kei Nishikori

By Homare Yatsushita

Kei Nishikori is a famous tennis player from Matsue city, Shimane Prefecture. He is 178 cm tall and weighs 76 kg. It seems that the reason he started playing tennis was the tennis racket that his father bought as a souvenir. The highest self in the world ranking is 4th in singles, the highest in Asian men’s history. He is 167th in doubles. He was the first singles player in the history of Japanese men to be in the top 10 of the world rankings.

When he was 5 years old, he started attending tennis school. At the age of six he met coach Masaki Kashiwai. His mother was a classmate with coach Kashiwai. From that time on, his talent began to show, and he was able to improve as soon as he was given instructions and corrected the trajectory to the ball. As for the practice menu, 40 minutes of the 90 minute of practice in the lower grades was playing tag. Nishikori was better than anyone else, and he improved steadily by applying feints so that he could not be cornered. By the time he was in sixth grade, he began to play tennis, betraying his opponent, even though he initially matched his opponent.

In 2003, Nishikori studied abroad at the IMG tennis academy in the United states when he was 13 years old. This was a great opportunity to make a leap later. IMG tennis academy has established itself as the number one school in the world for athletes preparing for the next step in life. IMG combines professional instruction, state of the art training methods, and a fun and motivational environment for young athletes from around the world.

Nishikori won the Delray Beach International Tennis Championships in 2008. He became the second male ATP Tour singles winner in Japanese history after Shuzo Matuoka. To date, on the ATP Tour, he has recorded 12 wins in singles, the most in Japanese history, and one runner-up in doubles. He was also the first Grand Slam singles finalist in Asian men’s history and runner-up of the 2014 US Open Men’s Singles. In addition, he was the first ATP World Tour Men’s Finals contestant from Asia. He won the ATP Master 1000 tournament four times. In 2016, he became a bronze medalist for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics Men’s Singles and won the medal for the first time in 96 years. He has also made it to the Top 8 of the Olympic games in a row.

Kei Nishikori’s style of play is to be aggressive on the baseline. In a nutshell, he has a very aggressive swing. For him, attack is the best defense. Also, Kei Nishikori’s drop shot is very nice. It is a very effective shot where he can hit a drop shot in a disadvantageous situation and change the flow of the game to win. The nice thing about Kei Nishikori’s drop shot is that he hits a drop shot instead of taking a normal swing. The opponent thinks the stroke is coming and goes behind the baseline.

Once he uses the drop shot, his opponent will be wary of the drop shot even during the rally. And it will affect his opponent’s other shots because they won’t know if he will use his drop shot or not. So it’s a very effective shot. His weakness is his serve. It spins, and when it spins it slows down, but it has better control and makes it a shot that is easy to return. it.

Kei Nishikori is currently working on rehabilitation of his left hip, which was operated on in January. He said, “For rehabilitation, I run lightly, put a traffic cone on the side and run back and forth, and repeat when I stop. I will do my best.” He says it will take some time before he returns. We look forward to his success in the future.