Nishikori Finds Comfort Zone In Australia

Kei Nishikori has plenty of reasons to love Melbourne. The top Japanese man has made the second week of the tournament every year since 2012 and advanced to the quarter-finals last year (l. to Wawrinka). Despite being thousands of miles from his hometown, the World No. 7 has drawn confidence from the sight of familiar faces in the crowd.

“I feel like I have a lot of support [in Melbourne],” Nishikori, who is 16-6 in the year’s first major tournament, said. “I feel like lots of Asians and even Japanese come to watch. So I feel very comfortable playing here. I hope I can win this tournament sometime.”

Nishikori’s ability to hit the ground running on the sun-baked hard courts of Melbourne could be an inborn quality, but it may also be attributed to the difficult route he took as a teenager. At age 14, Nishikori left the quiet, picturesque town of Shimane to train year-round at the IMG Bollettieri Academy in Bradenton, Florida.

“I think it’s important to come to the U.S. when I was younger,” Nishikori noted. “When you are young, you pick things up really fast. I got used to staying outside of Japan. It’s really important to learn English and to have good communication with everybody. I think it’s very important.

“It was really tough, especially the first couple of years,” Nishikori added. “I couldn’t communicate with anybody, even on the court. They were doing some drills and I couldn’t understand anything. I had some tough times. But after two, three years I got little bit more confidence to speak English. The culture is really different between Japan and the U.S.”

Nishikori made short work of that cultural hurdle, winning his first ATP World Tour title in Delray Beach in 2008. Overall, he has claimed 10 titles in four different countries (USA, Japan, Spain and Malaysia).

The World No. 7’s next challenge will be facing German Philipp Kohlschreiber in the first round of the Australian Open. Kohlschreiber, No. 34 in the Emirates ATP Rankings, narrowly missed out on being one of the tournament’s 32 seeds.

“It’s not going to be an easy first match,” Nishikori, who has never faced Kohlschreiber at tour-level, said. “He’s been playing a lot and he has a lot of experience. I’m not sure why he’s not seeded. I’ve been playing well, but it’s going to be an exciting first match.”