Fearsome Kyrgios Powers Into Tokyo 2R

No. 6 seed Nick Kyrgios put his best foot forward in a 7-5, 6-2 win over American Ryan Harrison at the Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships 2016 on Tuesday. Harrison was coming into the match with confidence, having qualified for an ATP World Tour main draw for the eighth time this year. However, he had few answers for Kyrgios’s pace and succumbed in 80 minutes.

The Aussie enjoyed a stellar day on serve, firing 14 aces, landing 73 per cent of first serves and not facing a break point. Kyrgios’s comfort level on his delivery was such that he often followed up a first-serve miss with another flat bomb. The #NextGen star routinely topped 200km/h on his second serve and closed out the match with a 194km/h strike.

“My serve is obviously a big weapon. It gets me out of trouble when I’m not feeling so great and it’s always a part of my game that I can rely on to win matches,” Kyrgios said. “I just think that I can’t miss the same serve twice, so why not go after it on the second serve [too]?”

Czech veteran Radek Stepanek, a nine-time qualifier at ATP World Tour events this year, enjoyed a better fate than Harrison, beating Frenchman Stephane Robert 6-2, 6-1. If the 37 year old were to qualify for another main draw this year, he would move ahead of six other players for sole possession of the open-era record. Stepanek, Kyrgios’s second-round opponent, had also qualified for nine events back in 2002.

No. 5 seed David Goffin saw off Japanese #NextGen player Yoshihito Nishioka 7-5, 6-2 to set up a clash against Jiri Vesely, who beat Kevin Anderson 3-6, 6-0, 6-4. Goffin’s metronomic baseline tempo was too much for the left-handed wild card. The Belgian broke serve five times and sealed the win in one hour and 39 minutes.

Juan Monaco was a 7-6(2), 7-6(5) victor over American teenager Taylor Fritz. The Argentine broke with the #NextGen player serving for the first set at 5-4 and maintained his momentum to win in one hour and 47 minutes. Monaco held the big-serving Fritz to five aces while hitting seven untouchable serves of his own.