BRADENTON, Florida – Japan’s former world No. 4 Kei Nishikori said Tuesday he is “barely hanging on” in terms of his physical condition after recently denying a report of his imminent retirement.<\/p>\n
Speaking after the Elizabeth Moore Sarasota Open, an ATP Challenger Tour event, in Bradenton, Florida, the 36-year-old said his focus is on “the match right in front of me.”<\/p>\n
“It’s not super good, but it’s just about good enough to play a match,” Nishikori said after beating world No. 344 Argentine Nicolas Kicker 6-3, 6-2 in the round of 32 at IMG Academy, where the Shimane Prefecture native trained from age 14.<\/p>\n
Nishikori made his professional debut in 2007 and became the first Japanese player to reach the final of a Grand Slam tournament at the 2014 U.S. Open, which he lost to Croatia’s Marin Cilic.<\/p>\n
He reached world No. 4, the highest ranking by a Japanese man in the Open Era, in March 2015 and won bronze in men’s singles at the 2016 Rio Olympics.<\/p>\n
“It feels strange to hear I’m retiring from someone else. I’m also grateful that I’m getting that much attention,” said Nishikori, who on Sunday denied the report while also stating on social media he will “update soon” on the matter.<\/p>\n
Nishikori has been hampered by injuries in recent years and missed the latest Grand Slam — the Australian Open — in January due to right shoulder pain. He has played four tournaments this season.<\/p>\n
“I don’t really have one,” Nishikori said after he was asked about his current big target. “I’m starting to find it hard to think about it at the same time. I’ll take each match seriously and see how much I can improve my condition.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BRADENTON, Florida – Japan’s former world No. 4 Kei Nishikori said Tuesday he is “barely hanging on” in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":589976,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-589975","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/589976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}