It has been a rough season–especially of late–for Holger Rune, but the 21-year-old Dane is through to the Japan Open quarterfinals after cruising past Yoshihito Nishioka 6-2, 6-4 on Saturday. Rune’s reward is a showdown against another Japanese star, Kei Nishikori.
A resurgent Nishikori continued his latest comeback to tennis with a 6-2, 6-3 rout of an in-form Jordan Thompson. The 34-year-old broke Thompson a whopping five times while advancing in just one hour and 23 minutes.
Nishikori beat Hangzhou champion Marin Cilic to kick off his Tokyo campaign in what was a rematch of the 2014 U.S. Open final.
“I think I played a little bit too good,” Nishikori joked after beating Thompson. “I surprised myself, maybe my team is also a little bit surprised. I played really well. Very solid, very focused. This is how I wanted to play. Play aggressive with not many mistakes. It was almost perfect today.
“For sure this was the best match so far this year. Jordan is not an easy player to play against. He is very solid and has a good serve–not easy to play against. But I really handled it well today.”
The rest of the Tokyo quarterfinal lineup is Ben Shelton vs. Arthur Fils, Tomas Machac vs. Alex Michelsen, and Jack Draper vs. Ugo Humbert.
Nishi playing well
Nish almost had him….up 5 to 3 in the final set. Oh well, Kei played brilliantly this tournament.