Yoshihito Nishioka has made coming back from a major knee injury look simple this week at the Miami Open presented by Itau. He scouted his #NextGenATP opponent by watching YouTube videos. He adapted his gamestyle and played aggressively against Aussie Alex de Minaur. Then, during only his fifth match of the past 12 months, he routed the Sydney International finalist to set a second-round contest with 10th seed Tomas Berdych. But don't let the soft-spoken left-hander's easy success deceive you: Nishioka's rehab from a torn ACL in his left knee was as arduous as you'd expect. After surgery in early April 2017, Nishioka couldn't run for three months. He couldn't play tennis for nine months. Every day, he trudged to...
The clips are all over YouTube, moments Adrian Mannarino wished never would have occurred. There's the time he threw his racquet against the fence at the ATP Challenger Tour event in Lexington, U.S.A, causing a ball boy to flinch. Another time he lost his cool in Stockholm and lobbed his racquet across the court. Plenty more exist, Mannarino knows, because that's how the Frenchman used to react to a missed forehand or a double fault. “I was getting frustrated so easily just losing my serve once, missing one easy shot, and I was getting out of the match so quickly. Also, I was feeling like my opponents knew it,” Mannarino told ATPWorldTour.com. His opponents thought, Mannarino said, “OK, I just...
Age is just a number, right? Especially these days, players in their 30s play as if they're in their 20s, and players in their 20s bounce back as if they're in their late teens. Aussie Thanasi Kokkinakis completely agrees. The 21-year-old doesn't feel like he's only two years removed from his teenaged years. Kokkinakis, who's spent the past two seasons battling injuries, feels closer to the age of his second-round opponent, Roger Federer. “I feel like a bit of a veteran in some ways. I'm 21, but I feel a lot older. I don't know if that's a good thing, probably a bad thing. I definitely feel like I'm in my late 30s, at least,” Kokkinakis told ATPWorldTour.com. Watch: Kokkinakis...
