Kei Nishikori - Talented Tennis Player You've Never Heard of...
There are over 1000 men and 1000 women competing on the various levels of the professional tennis circuit. You’ve probably only heard of a few of these players and most will never reach your radar. Many of these players are very talented, but injuries, bad attitude, work ethic, etc. contribute to their lack of success. Nonetheless, every so often a player breaks through at a tournament and enters the consciousness of tennis fans around
the world. Sometimes, this occurs at a Grand Slam, e.g. Amelie Mauresmo reaching the Australian Open finals, Maria Sharapova winning Wimbledon at age 17, David Nalbandian reaching the Wimbledon final, Marcos Baghdatis and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga reaching the Australian Open finals. This past week, there was another break-out performance by 18 year old Japanese tennis player, 244th-ranked, Kei Nishikori, who won eight consecutive matches en route to winning the title in Delray Beach over James Blake in the finals. Nishikori, who has trained at Bollettieri’s the past three years, has a strong baseline game, solid serve and athletic moves around the court. Nishikori is the youngest champion on the ATP Tour since Lleyton Hewitt won a title at age 16 in 1998 and the first Japanese player to capture an ATP title since 1992 when Shuzo Matsuoka won the tournament in Seoul. Therefore, it’s a major event both for Kei Nishikori’s career, as well as for Japanese men’s tennis. The challenge ahead is for Nishikori to capitalize on this win and vault himself even higher.
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