From one history-maker to another. Naomi Osaka had nothing but love for her compatriot, Kei Nishikori, after the 36-year-old announced on Thursday that he will retire from professional tennis at the end of this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Calling Nishikori a “Japanese legend” as she shared content of his career highlights, Osaka also expressed how much she looked up to the former ATP World No. 4 in her youth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I do not think Kei knows how inspirational he is to me but when I was younger, I would always watch his matches and want to do as well as him,” Osaka, who is eight years Nishikori’s junior, wrote alongside a photo of the two in front of the Japanese flag at the 2018 US Open — a tournament Osaka went on to win. Nishikori also reached the semifinals that year, marking the first time that a Japanese man and woman got that far at the same major.<\/p>\n
Osaka also commented on Nishikori’s social media post where he announced his retirement that it “was an honor to watch [him] play.”<\/p>\n
Four years prior to Osaka winning her first major in New York, Nishikori became the first player — male or female — representing the Asian nation to reach a Grand Slam singles final when he was runner-up at the 2014 US Open. He went on to set what was, at the time, an Open Era record for the highest singles ranking for a player from Japan in 2015 — until Osaka surpassed him by reaching World No. 1.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nishikori also qualified for the year-end ATP Finals four times — twice reaching the semifinals, in another first for Japan — and won a bronze medal at the 2016 Olympics in Rio for the country’s first Olympic tennis medal in 96 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From one history-maker to another. Naomi Osaka had nothing but love for her compatriot, Kei Nishikori, after the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[8,85,1200],"class_list":{"0":"post-15519","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-osaka","8":"tag-japan","9":"tag-osaka","10":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}