NEW YORK – Japan’s Kei Nishikori was beaten by compatriot Rei Sakamoto 6-4, 7-6(3) in the U.S. Open qualifying third round Friday, falling a win short of making his last Grand Slam main draw before his retirement at the end of the season.<\/p>\n
The 36-year-old Nishikori, the first Asian man to reach a Grand Slam final at the tournament in 2014, was unable to overcome the big-serving 20-year-old Sakamoto, who sealed the win with his 19th ace against none from the veteran at Flushing Meadows.<\/p>\n
“It’s a refreshing emotion, as if he totally blew out the last flame of a candle,” said Nishikori, a former world No. 4 who received a qualifying wild card for this year’s tournament. “I felt I wasn’t able to cope once the level went up slightly.”<\/p>\n
“Not happy to lose today, but I mean I’m happy for Rei, he’s the next Japanese top player so I hope he can make the top 10 soon. It was a great week for me. I was really enjoying it.”<\/p>\n
Nishikori went up 2-0 but Sakamoto responded with two breaks of his own to take the first set. The pair held serves in the second set before Sakamoto jumped to a 6-1 lead in the tiebreak and prevailed in 1 hour, 42 minutes.<\/p>\n
“I was really looking forward to facing him. I haven’t been able to win in practice matches for the past year or two,” Nishikori said of Sakamoto. “He moved really fast, served well and didn’t let me get into a good rhythm.”<\/p>\n
“I really enjoyed my entire tennis life. It was almost 20 years with the pros and especially here I had great memories, one time final, semis, many great matches I played here in New York so happy to play in the last moment.”<\/p>\n
Sakamoto had 33 winners to 14 from Nishikori and the up-and-coming world No. 157 was “happy” to reach the main draw starting on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“My serves were really good, and I also managed to play aggressively,” Sakamoto said. “I hope to become a player on par with Kei.”<\/p>\n
Nishikori, the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics bronze medalist, has been plagued by injuries since having left hip surgery in January 2022.<\/p>\n
He did not play in the U.S. Open mixed doubles with Naomi Osaka as originally announced but is scheduled to compete in the Japan Open starting in late September in Tokyo.<\/p>\n
“I have one more tournament to go, so hope I can do well in Japan,” Nishikori said. “I’ll have a break and want to practice again. I want to play a great match and get one back on Rei.”<\/p>\n
While announcing his impending retirement in late April, Nishikori admitted he still has lingering feelings about his career.<\/p>\n
“Strictly speaking, I’m definitely reluctant,” he said. “I’d like to say I’ve given my all but part of me feels otherwise. My feeling isn’t yet settled and it’s complex.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK – Japan’s Kei Nishikori was beaten by compatriot Rei Sakamoto 6-4, 7-6(3) in the U.S. Open…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":872351,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-872350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=872350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/872351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=872350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=872350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=872350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}