Top 9 Japanese tennis players of all time

#2 Kei Nishikori

Kei Nishikori at the Nitto ATP World Tour Finals

Kei Nishikori is perhaps the greatest male tennis player to have emerged from Japan. He has won a career prize money of little over 21 million US dollars till date, putting him 14th on the all-time list.

Nishikori reached a career-high ranking of World No. 4 in 2015. After battling injuries and a form slump in the first half of 2018, he made a remarkable improvement in the second half, making the US Open semis and also qualifying for the ATP Finals. He beat the great Roger Federer in the round-robin match at the Finals, before losing his subsequent matches to Dominic Thiem and Kevin Anderson.

Nishikori was a bronze medalist at the 2016 Rio Olympics in the sIngles category - the first time that a Japanese tennis player had won an Olympic medal since 1920. Memorably, Nishikori beat Novak Djokovic in the semifinals of the 2014 US Open en-route to his only appearance in a Grand Slam final till date. He finished as the runner-up to Marin Cilic.