Article Author:
Reuters
World No. 96 Yoshihito Nishioka of Japan defeated No. 1 seed Andrei Rublev 6-3, 6-4 on Saturday to beat Washington, D. .
The 26-year-old left-hander , who came to the US capital last month after winning five of seven matches on the Feeder Challenger circuit, have not won a tour-level match since the Miami Masters in March.
On Sunday, Nishioka won another semi-final in his ATP 500 event, where he beat Sweden's Mikael Ruimer 7-6 (4) 6-3 to become the 2019 champion. He will face Kyrgios and play for the biggest title of his career.
"I love playing here. I've been here many times. But tomorrow everyone will love Nick too," said Nishioka. . He added that he hoped the crowd would still be rooting for him and that he was just going to enjoy the day.
Nishioka, who reached a career-high No. He knocked out Atlanta runner-up Jenson Brooksby in the first round, then defeated three seeded players - Alex de Minaur, Karen Khachanov and Dan Evans. Amazing 8th place Rublev.
It took him 3 hours and 35 minutes to beat England's Evans on Friday.
"Today I was very tired before the start of the game, and I was very tired before the match against Evans and Khachanov. I felt that I couldn't do the same as I did," Nishioka said. "I knew Andrei would be aggressive with me, so I tried to be a little aggressive." He has a 0-0 record, and if he lifts the trophy, he'll move up to No. 37 in the rankings.
The heavyweight Australian won the last of his six ATP titles at the same event in Washington in 2019.
We were) 16 years old. It's really tough to play against him," Nishioka said. (Reporting by his Sudipto Ganguly of Mumbai; Editing by Gerry Doyle)
