Tennis News

Kei Nishikori, who defeated Milos Raonic last year to win the Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships 2014, will open against young gun Borna Coric in Tokyo. The 25 year old from Shimane is looking to cement his place at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals. Nishikori currently has 3770 Emirates ATP Race To London points, good for sixth overall.

The 18 year old Coric is in the midst of a breakout season. The Croat is currently No. 38, and was ranked as high as No. 33 in July of this year. The players have never faced each other at tour-level, and Coric’s last win over a Top-10 player came in February against Andy Murray (Dubai QF).

In the top half, No. 1 seed Stan Wawrinka begins his Tokyo campaign against veteran Radek Stepanek. Stepanek, who has battled injury in the past year, has only managed to take part in 11 tour-level matches in 2015 (8-3). This would be an opportune moment for Wawrinka to get a second win over the Czech in six meetings, as he is trying to add to his 5505 Emirates ATP Race To London points (4^th) heading into the final months of the season.

An intriguing first-round matchup is the one pitting eighth seed Grigor Dimitrov and unseeded Benoit Paire. A comparison of the players’ Emirates ATP Rankings and year-to-date records favours the 24 year-old Bulgarian (19^th, 27-17), but Paire (32^nd, 19-14) won their first FedEx ATP Head2Head matchup in the first round of the 2012 US Open, then pushed Dimitrov to three sets in Stockholm 2013 before succumbing.

Novak Djokovic will head into the China Open with confidence, having won the title an unprecedented five times (2009, 2010, 2012-14) and having already booked his place at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals. The Serb is 24-0 at the tournament, beating Marin Cilic in 2009, David Ferrer in 2010, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in 2012, Rafael Nadal in 2013 and Tomas Berdych, this year’s No.2 seed, for last year’s title.

The top seed opens against a qualifier, and could face big-serving John Isner or young gun Dominic Thiem in the quarter-finals. The sixth-seeded American and the Austrian are set to duel in a blockbuster first-round encounter.

On the opposite side of the draw, Rafael Nadal, the 2005 champion (d. Coria) and 2013 runner-up (l. to Djokovic), will face Chinese wild card Di Wu in the first round. The World No. 7, seeded third in Beijing, is 45-15 on the year, and is chasing his 54^th tour-level title.

Second seed Tomas Berdych will take on Uruguay’s Pablo Cuevas in his opening match. Berdych is fifth in the Emirates ATP Race To London with 3850 points. Berdych, Nadal (7^th, 3715 points) and David Ferrer (8^th, 3005 points) are well-positioned to secure one of the four remaining spots at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals. Milos Raonic (who plays Viktor Troicki in the first round) and Isner are on the outside looking in, but could make up ground with deep runs in Beijing.

Ivo Karlovic could break countryman Goran Ivanisevic’s all-time ace record during the China Open. The 6’11” Karlovic is 35 aces back and will open against Spaniard Guillermo Garcia-Lopez.

Wild cards looking to make a dent in the draw include China’s Di Wu and Ze Zhang, as well as Chinese Taipei’s Yen-Hsun Lu.