"It's really nice to play 3 matches here before the AO rather than being tight there" - Nishikori hints at Australian Open return

Kei Nishikori was a shining light of hope in Japanese tennis in the mid-2010's. His impressive consistency saw him challenge the best and regularly go deep in major events. Unfortunately, his career has gone off the rails in recent times, but that has not stopped him from persevering with his tennis career. His next stop: the Australian Open.

The former world number four is targeting a return to Melbourne. He featured at the 2025 event, defeating qualifier Thiago Moura Monteiro in a sublime comeback win ahead of a four-set defeat to Tommy Paul. It was his first Australian Open since 2021, and only third Grand Slam appearance in four years.

Ranked number 158, the former US Open finalist has not played a lot of tennis this year. He featured at a couple Masters 1000 events with little success. His highlight came right at the start of the campaign in the Honk Kong Open. He made a charge as a wildcard all the way to the semi-final, defeating the likes of Denis Shapovalov, Cameron Norrie and Karen Khachanov enroute. The blast from the past would not last as he was dumped out by Alexandre Muller.

"Can't have any vision for the future yet, but it's really nice to play 3 matches here before the AO rather than being tight there. Still have more bad things than good now, I'd like to improve them," Nishikori said after he competed in a Challenger event in his native Japan.

This shows his ambitions are clear: to return to competing regularly with the star players on the planet. He had reached a major final back in 2014 at Flushing Meadows where he lost in straight sets to Marin Cilic. He reached a plethora of quarter-finals in his pomp, along with a couple of semi-finals in New York. He has also reached three Masters 1000 events in the past, losing to Rafael Nadal in the Madrid Open in 2014, and Novak Djokovic in the Miami Open and Canadian Open back in 2017. In total he has reached 27 ATP finals, winning 12 of them. His last one came at the start of 2019 when he got the better of Daniil Medvedev to win the Brisbane Open. This ended a nine-match streak of final defeats starting back in 2016.

Recently, he made the quarter-finals of a 75 Challenger event in Yokohama. He defeated Taisei Ichikawa and Sanhui Shin before the number one seed was dumped out to Kaichi Uchida.

"The good thing for today is, I felt motivated, it's the first time for a while, I was happy for that," Nishikori admitted. "I wanted to play a good match from the beginning. Expected it would be the last match whether I win or lose, so it kind of felt like enough, but it was a good match. There were some good, and also many things that I have to get back & improve through playing matches. I've had practice w/ JP players for the last 3 weeks & felt a bit like I can still make it. If I exert this in a match, I might be able to make it, I kind of feels like this."

The Australian Open will begin on the Monday, 12th January and climax on Sunday, 1st December. Nishikori will be hoping to put his name on the list of players competing, whether through a wildcard or qualifying as the 35-year-old looks to roll back the years.