kei-nishikori - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Indian Wells Men's Draw Is One Big Clusterfuck
Today, out in the Coachella Valley, the Indian Wells Masters will begin. It’s the highest-profile tennis tournament in the world after the four Grand Slams, dropping a fat bounty of 1000 ranking points on its winners. Everyone in the tennis universe should be excited, except for Serena Williams and ...
Kei Nishikori Is Shook
Kei Nishikori is the fifth-best tennis player in the world and even his practice sessions get mobbed in his native Japan. His trademark shot is the down-the-line backhand, a smoothly flicked frozen rope. You might have last seen him in January taking Roger Federer to five sets in the quarters of the...
Alexandr Dolgopolov's Best Weapon Is The Screwiest Game In Tennis
One complaint lobbed at today’s game is that everyone is content to play the same style of tennis: Just stand at the back of the court and hit hard topspin groundstrokes over and over until your opponent, who’s attempting the same, can’t keep up. We live in a “power baseline” era, and it didn’t use ...
Roger Federer Was Better Than Vintage
“It’s not so much fun,” said Tomas Berdych, the 10th seed at the Australian Open, after getting picked apart in a neat 92 minutes. “I would rather be in the stands watching than on the court.”...
Stan Wawrinka And Kei Nishikori Had To Work At The Australian Open's First Round
The first round’s over in the Australian Open and no giants have been toppled yet, but two are already exposing their vulnerabilities: No. 4 seed Stan Wawrinka and No. 5 seed Kei Nishikori were both stretched to five sets in their opening matches....
"Baby Federer" Is Growing Up, Collecting Scalps
It can’t be totally pleasant to attract premature comparisons to the greatest of all time. Too early in his career, Grigor Dimitrov was saddled with the nickname “Baby Fed,” a comparison that spoke more to aesthetics than to his record of success: He has the same lethal, fluid groundstrokes as the S...
The Four Best Men's Tennis Players Will Sort Out Where They Sit On The Food Chain
Novak Djokovic, who’s been blessed with some well-timed cakewalks lately, rounded up and slapped a group full of youngsters right in their apple cheeks. Meanwhile Andy Murray hacked his way through a death group, culminating in today’s dismissal of Stan Wawrinka (and a very respectable Stan, too) in...
Kei Nishikori Had All The Tools To Beat Andy Murray, But He Spilled Them All Over The Floor
That these three sets sprawled for three hours and 20 minutes should explain a lot about this grind session between tennis’s two fastest players. Eventually Andy Murray—or at least his empty, deadened husk—edged out Kei Nishikori, 6-7(9), 6-4, 6-4, in their consistently high-quality, often infuriati...
You Never Know Which Stan Wawrinka You're Going To Get
Last we saw the third-ranked tennis player in the world, he was stumbling out of the first round in Paris, shown the door by the world No. 91. Before that, in Basel, he crumbled against No. 72 Mischa Zverev, facing visible mental collapse in the third set. And in today’s rematch of the U.S. Open sem...
Kei Nishikori Cuts Short Juan Martin Del Potro's Comeback Run
The recently exhumed Juan Martin del Potro—now equipped with functional wrists and his first title in 2 years—saw his seven-match win streak severed by Kei Nishikori today at Swiss Indoors Basel. 2016 has been a dope comeback year for the 28-year-old del Potro, but all this playing (and winning) may...
Novak Djokovic Has Had The Easiest Road To The U.S. Open Semifinals
Like a carefree penguin belly-sliding across a glacier, the best men’s tennis player in the world has cruised into the semifinals of the U.S. Open by playing only nine full sets. Let’s examine how cushy Novak Djokovic has had it:...
Butterfly Ghost Gets Revenge; Andy Murray Loses To Kei Nishikori
Life is not easy for Andy Murray, who has spent most of his career laboring away under the long shadows of three all-time greats—Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic—without ever tasting the No. 1 ranking. But nor is life particularly precious to Andy Murray, who slew a butterfly on court during the fifth s...