Posts
Bleary-eyed and delirious, tennis fans across Japan reveled Sunday morning at history in the making. Kei Nishikori, the country’s 24-year-old tennis sensation, had just powered past Novak Djokovic to book a place at a Grand Slam final — a first for a Japanese player, and for a man from Asia.
“Amazing, just amazing; the moment he won, I couldn’t believe it,” said Toshiyuki Hasegawa, who forfeited a night’s sleep to watch a live-stream of the United States Open semifinal, trying to keep the noise down at his Tokyo apartment out of respect for his sleeping neighbors.
But when Nishikori’s victory came, just after 4 a.m., Hasegawa, 39, who runs an independent film festival, could not help turning up the volume. “We’ve just never had a male player at the top levels in tennis,” he said by telephone. “And to think it’s Nishikori who made it this far. He isn’t tall even for a Japanese man.”
Still, Nishikori, who stands 5 feet 10 inches, is now Japan’s biggest sports star, dominating news headlines Sunday. “Nishikori crushes the No. 1 seed, advances to a historic final,” read a Jiji Press news flash. “An unprecedented feat for Japan,” declared the public broadcaster NHK.
Nishikori’s triumph set off a euphoric storm on social media, where Japanese are a big presence. “I woke up to find that Kei Nishikori had changed history,” @knbn14, from Musashino, Japan, wrote on Twitter. “I’m going to name my future child Kei,” wrote @26Cheers, an economics student outside Kobe. “Kei Nishikori, have you become a god?” wrote @gyonikuyasai, a college student in Yokohama.
Nishikori’s stardom in his native Japan is unmatched, even though he has not lived there full time for years. Since he was 14, Nishikori has made Florida his home, training first at Nick Bollettieri’s academy and more recently with a coaching team that includes the former American star Michael Chang.
At the Bollettieri academy, Nishikori was given the nickname Project 45, a reference to an early professional goal: to become the highest-ranked Japanese male player in the Open era, bettering the record of No. 46 set by Shuzo Matsuoka in 1992.
Nishikori surged past that goal four years ago and has never looked back. He is now the face of tennis in Japan at a time when a crop of strong players, like Kimiko Date-Krumm, are starting to wind down their careers.
He was also the first Japanese man to reach a major semifinal since Jiro Sato reached the last of his five semifinals at Wimbledon in 1933.
Ichiro Suzuki, the Yankees’ Japanese star, watched part of Saturday’s match from the clubhouse. “For one, because he came here and made it to the semifinals, we were all reminded that there hadn’t been a guy since 19-whatever,” Suzuki said through an interpreter. “So, obviously, just that alone gives us pride. Also, my wife is from the same place he is from, so that kind of made it extra special for me to watch.”
In Japan, Nishikori has become a sponsor’s darling, hawking Nissin cup noodles, a popular sports jelly drink and athletic attire from the Japanese clothing giant Uniqlo.
In the early hours of Sunday morning, the cheering was perhaps most heated in Matsue, the sleepy capital of Shimane, a largely rural corner of Japan from which Nishikori hails.
About 300 local tennis fans, some of them students at Nishikori’s former tennis school, gathered to watch the match on a big screen set up at a local hotel. A large message board was adorned with messages: “Let’s Go Nishikori!” and “Shoot for World Champion!” Masaki Kashiwagi, who coached Nishikori before he left Japan, looked teary-eyed.
“I am full of emotion,” he told NHK. “I want him to win one more, and become Grand Slam champion.”
One problem loomed over local Nishikori fans, however. None of Japan’s major networks, which were unprepared for Nishikori’s advance, had planned a live broadcast from the Open. Only one paid satellite broadcasting network, Wowow, beamed his matches in real time.
The predicament has sent Japanese scrambling to find live-streaming sites on the web, or other alternatives. “Congratulations Kei Nishikori on advancing to the finals,” Takatane Kiuchi, a former member of the Japanese Parliament, wrote on Twitter early Sunday. “Now, does anyone know how we can watch?”
If only he were as lucky as Yukari Shimizu, a 23-year-old graduate student from Japan who is studying biochemistry at Columbia University. She and a friend paid about $200 for a ticket hours before Nishikori’s semifinal match.
“It was totally worth it,” said Shimizu, an avid player who trained for several summers at the Bollettieri academy. “I got to see him hit those remarkable backhands down the line. I was like, Oh, wow.”
Nishikori’s ascent, she said, was a big win for Japan on the world tennis stage — and also a big win for tennis in Japan.
“Japanese TV’s so dominated by baseball and soccer,” Shimizu said. “With tennis, most people have a five-minute attention span. But now he’s raising awareness of the sport, and that’s definitely exciting.”
No comments:
Post a Comment