Fifth seed Kei Nishikori marches on into third round. - UBITENNIS

Fifth seed Kei Nishikori marches on into third round.

By skip schwarzman
5 Min Read

After his grueling 5 set win in round one against Alex Kuznetsov, Japan’s Kei Nishikori found the going much easier against France’s 72nd ranked Jeremy Chardy, winning 6/4 6/3 6/4.

With his coach Michael Chang watching in the stands, Nishikori had to have known what his game plan was from the moment he walked into Hisense Arena: use his stellar movement, steely resolve, and accurate consistency to expose the weaker wheels of his tall, gangly opponent, a player with all the shots but who rarely hits them one-after-the-other.

The Japanese number one, who’s had the greatest success ever of any Japanese ATP player, followed that pattern from the outset, breaking Chardy’s first service game. Holding his own serve next, Nishikori threatened to take his opponent’s next service game, but with some solid play by the Frenchman and a few errors of his own he failed. Chardy had gotten out of jail.

Service games followed on form until Chardy served to save the set at 3/5. While he hits some scintillating shots in all his matches, Chardy simply couldn’t muster enough continual pressure to disrupt the steadiness of Nishikori’s game, and he was broken to lose the first set.

A slight Nishikori letdown at the start of the second set let Chardy break right off, though even then it took him two points; at 15/40 he netted an inside-out forehand after a long-ish rally, and then on the 30/40 point he won after a Hawkeye challenge proved that he was right, that Kei’s ball was wide. The first game went to the man from Pau, France.

But in the manner of all top players, Nishikori gathered himself and broke right back. Chardy’s rhythm was coming on stream, but the rock solid, baseline-hugging ball machine that is Kei Nishikori never let him pull ahead. Chardy only ran 20 meters more over the entire match (1879 vs Nishikori’s 1859.2), but it always seemed that he was doing all the scrambling while Nishikori was simply running.

zimbio.com  Source: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images AsiaPac)
zimbio.com Source: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images AsiaPac

Looking to establish some momentum, after breaking back the fifth seed put his first serve into play on the first point of the 1/1 game and proceed to quickly go up 40/0. According to the rankings this was never going to be a tight match, but Chardy’s 57% first serve percentage didn’t help him any, and Nishikori’s 69% success kept the pressure on throughout.

As happened multiple times, Chardy felt his oats long enough to hold strongly for 2/2, and even though Nishikori stuck to his game plan and kept making Chardy move, the Frenchman broke for 3/2. Yet another ragged game by the underdog, with a number of break point chances for Kei and even a game point for Chardy, gave the break right back (again!) to Nishikori. 3 all, second set.

The idea that he might have to spend hours on court once again must have energized Nishikori, because he cleaned up his shotmaking and, after each held their serves to 4/5 with Chardy serving, Kei took his opponent’s service game one more time, and with it the second set.

True to form, Chardy continued to impersonate a great player on one point and make duffers feel good about themselves on the next. Swinging away, he broke to open the third set and then got broken right back. No matter how well he could play any one point, or even a small group of points, the pressure Nishikori created by staying the course and not giving away anything of significance made Chardy press again and again, leaving his high risk game even less margin for error.

With Chardy serving at 3/4 Nishikori demonstrated why he’s number 5 in the world. He broke, played methodically on his serve to 30/0, hit an ace, stumbled slightly to 40/15, and then wrong-footed Chardy in a three ball rally. He was through in three, though it was tougher that the score makes it appear.

“There were too many breaks for me, but it was great to get through in 3 sets,” was Nishikori’s on-court summary. Fair enough. But a win is a win, and he’s into the third round, where he’ll meet the winner of Lukas Lacko versus Dudi Sela.

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