LADYDRAGON.COM - Kei Nishikori's interview after his win over Florian Mayer at the Australian Open 2011

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Wednesday January 19, 2011

Kei Nishikori's interview after his win over Florian Mayer at the Australian Open 2011

By LadyDragon

Australian Open 2011

MELBOURNE, Australia--(LadyDragon.com)19/01/11--Kei Nishikori's interview after his win over Florian Mayer at the Australian Open 2011

Q. A lot of people are looking at you again now with hopes for the future. Can you just sum up how your career has kind of gone. You were back here a year ago. How optimistic are you for the future?

KEI NISHIKORI: Uhm, I started well this year from Chennai. I played well there, and I'm getting really confidence through here. I played another good match today, and, you know, beating these kind of players give me more confidence to, you know, go up.

And my goal for now is, like, get top 50 as soon as possible I can. And I think it's gonna come soon if I can be healthy and play good.

I'm really feeling good now.

Q. A lot of people say that right now with Federer and Nadal at the top, it's one of the greatest eras ever for tennis. Then they say, But who are the people who are going to take the game on in the coming generations? Obviously, you're one of the people expected to. Is that a pressure to you or do you look forward to that?

KEI NISHIKORI: I never thought about it (laughter). You know, those two are I think greatest in tennis history, I guess. And, yeah, I played Nadal twice. Yeah, he's like different level. It's always fun to play them.

But, uhm, yeah, I think, yeah, a few guys can be like them. I think Djokovic, Murray, and Del Potro coming back now.

Q. But I'm thinking guys a little bit younger than those guys.

KEI NISHIKORI: Yeah, actually not many guys with my age. One year old is Cilic, Del Potro. But not many guys are coming up. Hopefully I can be the first one to, you know, get to top 10 or something.

Q. Could you tell us how much work you actually do with Brad, what areas he's concentrated on.

KEI NISHIKORI: We started December. It's on and off actually. You know, like, for this week he has to do ESPN. But we talk together every day about matches. He mentioned some things to change my tennis little bit. And everything, it's going well now.

Q. Could you tell us what sort of things, not being too specific, but what sort of things he wanted you to change?

KEI NISHIKORI: More steady on the court and get more percentage for my serve, especially first serve. I'm not the biggest guy, so try to hit more closes and more percentage up.

Q. I'm from China. We don't have a player on the tour. Can you tell us about how the Asian men's players get success on the tour? What are the important things?

KEI NISHIKORI: That's a difficult one. Maybe not best. Oh, well.

I practice at Bollettieri's in U.S. That's made me little different than playing Asia. Especially in Japan, it's tough to go outside. U.S., Europe, it's just tough to go outside.

I used to play a lot in Europe when I was juniors. I get many experience play with different players. That gave me more confidence to, uhm, play different guys.

Yeah, if you're in Asia, it's just tough to go outside, I think.