Life’s just grand for Japanese tennis
NEW YORK Kei Nishikori rallied to outlast Marin Cilic Wednesday at the U.S. Open, giving Japan a male and female semifinalist at the same Grand Slam for the first time in the professional era.
Nishikori won the rematch of the 2014 final with a 2-6, 6-4, 7-6 (5), 4-6, 6-4 victory in a match that lasted four hours eight minutes.
In the match before Nishikori’s, Naomi Osaka moved into her first Grand Slam semifinal by routing Lesia Tsurenko 6-1, 6-1 in the quarter-finals. Only once in the professional era that began in 1968 had Japan had a men’s and women’s player in the quarter-finals at the same tournament. That was at Wimbledon in 1995 and both Shuzo Matsuoka and Kimiko Date lost in that round.
The seventh-seeded Cilic won the 2014 final in straight sets for his only career major title. Nishikori said this week he was nervous once that match began, but this one was nothing like that day.
Instead, it resembled their 2010 second-round match in Flushing Meadows, when Nishikori rallied to win in five sets in 4:59, the fifth-longest men’s singles match by time in U.S. Open history.
The No. 21 seed continued his strong season after returning from a wrist injury that forced him to miss last year’s U.S. Open and will play No. 6 Novak Djokovic, who beat unseeded John Millman 6-3, 6-4, 6-4.
Osaka had it much easier, continuing what’s been a largely dominant run through the draw by winning in 57 minutes, the third time in her five matches she didn’t even have to play an hour.
The No. 20 seed moved from Japan to New York at age three and her deepest major run is coming at the tournament she first visited as a child. “Well, it definitely means a lot for me and I always thought if I were to win a Grand Slam, the first one I’d want to win is the U.S. Open because I have grown up here and, like, then my grandparents can come and watch,” she said.
Osaka will face No. 14 Madison Keys who beat Carla Suarez Navarro, 6-4, 6-3.