Two-time champ Nishikori topples Thompson in Tokyo, faces Rune next

p a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/kei-nishikori/n552/overview'Kei Nishikori/a’s bid for a hat-trick of titles at the a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/tokyo/329/overview'Kinoshita Group Japan Open Tennis Championships/a is building momentum. /p

p The home favourite on Saturday breezed past a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/jordan-thompson/tc61/overview'Jordan Thompson/a 6-2, 6-3 to reach the quarter-finals at his home ATP 500 for the sixth time in 11 main-draw appearances. Nishikori broke his opponent’s serve five times in a commanding 83-minute performance inside Ariake Coliseum, where he previously lifted the trophy in 2012 and 2014. /p

blockquote class="twitter-tweet"p lang="en" dir="ltr"Witnessing a Nishikori masterclass ✨a href="https://twitter.com/keinishikori?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@keinishikori/a reaches his first ATP 500 quarter-final since 2021!br /br / a href="https://twitter.com/japanopentennis?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@japanopentennis/a | a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/kinoshitajotennis?src=hashamp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"#kinoshitajotennis/a a href="https://t.co/pP3CvzlqQA"pic.twitter.com/pP3CvzlqQA/a/pmdash; ATP Tour (@atptour) a href="https://twitter.com/atptour/status/1839939729401245825?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"September 28, 2024/a/blockquote script async="" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"/script

p “I think I played a little bit too good,” joked Nishikori after the match. “I surprised myself, maybe my team is also a little bit surprised. I played really well. Very solid, very focused. This is how I wanted to play. Play aggressive with not many mistakes. It was almost perfect today." /p

p Nishikori was razor sharp on return throughout his second-round victory, particularly when facing second serves. The Japanese star won 67 per cent (14/21) of points against Thompson’s second delivery, according to Infosys ATP Stats, en route to reaching his first ATP 500 quarter-final since Washington 2021. /p

p With his seventh tour-level victory of his injury-disrupted 2024, the former No. 4 in the PIF ATP Rankings Nishikori improved to 3-1 in his Lexus ATP Head2Head series against the Australian. /p

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p “For sure this was the best match so far this year,” said Nishikori. “Jordan is not an easy player to play against. He is very solid and has a good serve. Not easy to play against, but I really handled it well today.” /p

p Awaiting Nishikori in the last eight will be sixth seed a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/holger-rune/r0dg/overview'Holger Rune/a, who ended the hopes of another Japanese star, a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/yoshihito-nishioka/n732/overview'Yoshihito Nishioka/a. Rune eased to a 6-2, 6-4 triumph in just 67 minutes to reach the quarter-finals on his Tokyo debut. /p

p [NEWSLETTER FORM] /p