He is a social networking phenomenon, a force of nature on court and a master of the clay. Kei Nishikori comes into this Mutua Madrid Open having earned the respect he deserves and, as a 2014 finalist, he is one of the players the Caja M\u00e1gica crowd admires the most. Excited about the prospect of a good week and building his confidence for the season, the Japanese player is warming up his engines before getting stuck into the competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love being in Spain!\u201d admits Kei, \u201cI think winning in Barcelona twice gave me a lot of confidence to play on clay. Here, with a little bit of altitude it\u2019s a little bit easier for hitting ground strokes. The last couple of years I\u2019ve been doing well on clay\u201d, says 2014\u2019s runner-up.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully I\u2019ll do well. I am motivated to do well this week, but I\u2019m coming back from an injury and we\u2019ll see how I can do for a couple of rounds\u201d, he adds. \u201cWinning the title would be great, but I know that I have a recent injury. I hope to get some confidence this week, have great matches during the next two weeks and be completely ready for the French Open\u201d.<\/p>\n
Is Nishikori a keen tourist? \u201cI haven\u2019t done much since I always have to go away fast. I haven\u2019t had much time to see the city. I found some good Japanese restaurants in Madrid\u201d responds Kei. \u201cI feel welcome in the city. I also love Spanish food so I can\u2019t complain\u201d.<\/p>\n
One of the biggest names on tour, Nishikori always attracts a throng of fans in training. \u201cWhenever I\u2019m in Spain I always feel the support. When we are on court the people always create a great atmosphere, I love playing here\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have great memories of this tournament playing against David Ferrer. Whenever we play we have some good battles. Rafa is playing very good tennis this season and is the one to beat on clay\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He is a social networking phenomenon, a force of nature on court and a master of the clay. Kei Nishikori comes into this Mutua Madrid Open having earned the respect he deserves and, as a 2014 finalist, he is one of the players the Caja M\u00e1gica crowd admires the most. Excited about the prospect of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":76855,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mutua-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desarrollo.mutuamadridopen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}