Nishikori to be back in action
Paris, May 26: Kei Nishikori is healthy and ready to return to Grand Slam action at the French Open with what amounts to a rather modest goal, given his rate of success in recent years.
“I hope,” he said, “I can go to the second week.”
By now, that’s nearly a given whenever he enters major tournaments. Nishikori, a 28- year- old from Japan who is seeded 19th at Roland Garros, is scheduled to play Maxime Janvier in the first round on Sunday.
While Janvier has never played a tour- level match, and has never been ranked better than 228th, Nishikori is familiar with the upper echelons of tennis. He has been ranked as high as no. 4, was the runnerup at the 2014 U. S. Open and a semi- finalist in New York two years later, along with making five other quarter- final runs at majors, including the French Open in two of the past three years.
But after appearing in 21 consecutive Grand Slam tournaments, he missed two in a row — last year’s U. S. Open, then the Australian Open this January — because his right wrist was not fully recovered enough from a torn tendon.
Getting in a lot of matches on red clay ahead of Paris became a priority, and Nishikori did just that, reaching the final at the Monte Carlo Masters before losing to Rafael Nadal, and the quarterfinals at the Italian Open. Along the way at those two events, Nishikori defeated Alexander Zverev, Marin Cilic and Grigor Dimitrov, all ranked in the top five.