Former World No.4 Kei Nishikori opened his Wimbledon campaign with a takedown of promising Australian Alexei Popyrin in straight sets.

Though he brought up his 100th win in Grand Slam tennis, he didn’t appear too pleased with his performance.

Kei Nishikori won his Round 1 game against Alexei Popyrin

While most players would settle for a winning score line of 6-4, 6-4- 6-4 in a Grand Slam opener, the veteran Japanese star seemed to hint that he expected better of himself against Popyrin.

A piece of statistics that the Japanese star might want to look at going into his second-round fixture is that he could convert only 3 of the 11 breakpoint opportunities that he created.

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That apart, there weren’t too many flaws in his game that showed up and might need fixing ahead of the next match.

Asked to share his experience of winning the 100th Grand Slam match, which is considered a noteworthy achievement by a tennis pro, Nishikori flashed a broad smile, saying, “Well…I’m happy…nothing in particular yeah…”

Nishikori lost in the last-16 at Halle

Nishikori came into All England on the back of a last-16 appearance at the Noventi Open in Halle, his only grass court tune-up event ahead of Wimbledon.

He opened his campaign against Ricardas Berankis of Lithuania but went down in a closely-fought round-of-16 tie against American Sebastian Korda.

Nowhere near close to the level that took him to No.4 in singles, the Japanese star had a fairly average run by his standards on clay as well.

He opened the clay court swing with a round-of-16 finish at Barcelona Open. 

He crashed out at the third-round exit at Italian Open after losing to eventual champion Alexander Zverev.

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Nishikori took the first set off the German but Zverev came storming back to win the next two.

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In his thirties now, Nishikori reached the fourth-round at Roland-Garros before coming up short against the German again in the battle for the quarter-finals.