The Japanese, 26, playing in his first tournament since retiring from the fourth round at Wimbledon with a rib injury, beat the Swiss 7-6 (8-6) 6-1. As he typically does, Djokovic will enter the final as the favourite, having only lost to Nishikori twice in their 11 matches, and not once this season so far.
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“It’s going to be interesting”.
Hard courts tend to favor fast players that love to be on the baseline, win points on long rallies, and a big serve tends to help. “We played in Miami and he kind of dominated the game, so I hope I can (get some) revenge this time”.
Djokovic found his game in ideal order as he stopped the victory run of tenth seeded Monfils.
The Frenchman, who is finally coming into his own as he approaches 30, I guess was just too gassed from winning Washington and his current 9-match win streak to take advantage. “It came at the right time”.
In the last 24-hours or so, the question that had arisen among those following the latest happenings of tennis was: could anyone stop the charging freight train that is Gael Monfils?
Known as the game’s most dominant returner especially on first serves, he won just 30% of his return points in that situation.
Turns out someone could – and it just happened to be the best player on the planet. He us now 12-0 against the Frenchman. He converted on the first after 37 minutes.
Swiss second seed Wawrinka’s game went away during the tiebreaker, allowing Nishikori to move into his second Masters 1000 final of 2016. Then Stan again got up and held 2 more set points at 6-4 but Nishikori fought back to win the last four points and take the set.
With Wawrinka serving for the first set at 5-3, the third-seeded Japanese broke back, drawing an error with a powerful return.
The second seed was all about the Asian ace as Wawrinka’s game evaporated. From there, he’d go on to win four more matches, save championship point against Ivo Karlovic and win the Citi Open title.
He said: “It’s just great to be into another Masters final – I’m looking forward to my opportunity”. On the next point, Wawrinka’s shot ricocheted off the net cord and out of play, and his forehand error on the clinching point was truly untimely.
“He was missing a little bit [at the start]… and then suddenly I think he didn’t miss”.
Wawrinka now stands 3-2 in the series while Nishikori continues to gain confident as he plays for the first time since Wimbledon.
“It was tough to play Kei today, there were tough conditions, quite windy, fast. I didn’t”, Wawrinka said.
That meant Nishikori had to finish business the hard way – though not almost hard enough, as he closed the set down 6-1 to reach the final.
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“You never know what is going to come the other way from a guy who has been in top form the last couple of weeks”. “Always when I’ve played against her it was a hard match”.
