{"id":14207,"date":"2026-06-05T17:33:33","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T17:33:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/14207\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T17:33:33","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T17:33:33","slug":"former-us-open-finalist-kei-nishikori-to-conclude-his-career-at-the-japan-open-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/14207\/","title":{"rendered":"Former US Open finalist Kei Nishikori to conclude his career at the Japan Open"},"content":{"rendered":"

PARIS (AP) \u2014 Former U.S. Open finalist Kei Nishikori will conclude his career<\/a> at home when he plays in the Japan Open later this year.<\/p>\n

The 36-year-old Nishikori has been given a wild card invitation by tournament organizers, the ATP Tour confirmed Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The tournament in Tokyo will be held from Sept. 30 to Oct. 6.<\/p>\n

By reaching No. 4, Nishikori was the highest-ranked Japanese man in the history of the ATP rankings.<\/p>\n

Nishikori, having made his professional debut in 2007, also became the first Japanese man to advance to the final of a Grand Slam singles tournament at the 2014 U.S. Open<\/a>. He lost the title match in straight sets to Croatia\u2019s Marin Cilic.<\/p>\n

Nishikori also won a bronze medal at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics by beating Rafael Nadal.<\/p>\n

Michael Chang, the 1989 French Open winner who used to coach Nishikori, pointed out that his accomplishments should be magnified since he played in the era of the Big Three and Big Four alongside Nadal, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor him to to get to No. 4 in the world on two different occasions is not easy,\u201d Chang told The Associated Press at the French Open<\/a>. \u201cI tell him he\u2019s got nothing but to feel great about what he\u2019s accomplished in tennis.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s approaching a different stage in his life and maybe he doesn\u2019t agree with me but I think he\u2019s going to have more important and more exciting things with his young family,\u201d Chang added. \u201cHe\u2019s had a great career and hopefully he finishes out well and Tokyo gives him a good send-off because I think he deserves it.\u201d<\/p>\n

After struggling with injuries, Nishikori has played exclusively on the lower-tier Challenger tour this year. He\u2019s now No. 703.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing Japanese, being able to look up to him, seeing everything he\u2019s achieved, in a world where Japanese tennis hasn\u2019t been able to go as far as he did in that moment in time, it was just so inspiring,\u201d four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka, a former No. 1, said in Paris. \u201cI wanted to stand next to him as the female representative.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I\u2019m really glad that I was able to do that,\u201d Osaka added. \u201cI\u2019m grateful for everything that he\u2019s done and I want to see him play tennis one more time.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP tennis: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/tennis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS (AP) \u2014 Former U.S. Open finalist Kei Nishikori will conclude his career at home when he plays…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[959,5774,5775,837,5053,2700,2658,270,139,120,118,50,28,5773,1646,463],"class_list":["post-14207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us-open","tag-andy-murray","tag-asia-pacific","tag-croatia","tag-japan","tag-kei-nishikori","tag-marin-cilic","tag-michael-chang","tag-naomi-osaka","tag-novak-djokovic","tag-rafael-nadal","tag-roger-federer","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-tokyo","tag-u-s-open-tennis-championships","tag-us-open"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}