A Grand Slam finalist and one of the men who -thanks to his extraordinary tennis- was summoned to try to break the hegemony of the Swiss Roger Federer, the Spanish Rafael Nadal and the Serbian Novak Djokovic for more than a decade, he ran out of ATP points and disappeared from the ranking after 12 and a half years.
This is Kei Nishikori, the Japanese, former No. 4 in the world, who has not competed since October last year, when, in Indian Wells, he said goodbye in the second round with the British Daniel Evans. A severe hip injury seriously affected his career and completely sidelined him from the 2022 season.
The 32-year-old Japanese hoped to return to the ATP 500 in Washington this year, but that prediction was finally not possible. In this way, he officially lost all the ranking points and went unranked for the first time since April 2010.
Nishikori, owner of a consistent and neat game from the back of the court, won 12 ATP titleswas runner-up at the 2014 US Open (lost the final to Croatian Marin Cilic) and won the bronze medal at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
The stainless passage of time and frustrating injuries made Kei, one of the best Asian tennis players of all time, disappear from the ATP list and further compromise his future. He turned pro in 2007 and remained in the top ten in the world for a long time. His future, now, is a real unknown.
