Kei Nishikori Announces Split With Longtime Coach Dante Bottini

Japan’s Number One tennis player, Kei Nishikori announced the split with his coach, Dante Bottini. The duo has been working together for nine years and their coaching league dates back from December 2010.

“After 9 years of working together literally a day in and day out, I have decided it is time for a new voice.  I am forever grateful for Dante’s contributions to my career and we will obviously remain very close friends. I appreciate so much the last 9 years and our friendship,” Kei Nishikori announced.

The pair together reached new heights in Nishikori’s tennis career, which includes, Kei’s bronze medal at the Rio Olympics 2016. Also, US Open 2014 was a Grand Slam to remember in the present era of tennis as the New York major witnessed two non-‘Big Four’ Slam finalists and one of them being Kei Nishikori and the other one being Marin Cilic.

A few months later, he moved into a new career-high world ranking of number four in March 2015. In a nutshell, Nishikori attained his breakthrough on the ATP Tour under Dante Bottini’s tutelage. Before, Bottini, Kei was training under Brad Gilbert and also joined forces with Michael Chang in 2014. 

The Japanese player has won 11 career titles till now and ten of them were achieved alongside Bottini’s partnership. 

At present, Kei Nishikori has been sidelined from the ATP Tour and he was forced to miss the Asian Swing (which is his favorite swing on the professional tour) due to an elbow injury. This also led to his absence at his home country’s event Rakuten Japan Open.

He was scheduled to play the charity match against Roger Federer in Tokyo, Japan on October 14, 2019, but pertaining to same Japan’s Number One tennis player had to miss it.

Nevertheless, Nishikori was seen during the exhibition event in Tokyo on Monday. Roger Federer played a doubles match where his partner was a wheelchair contestant and the chair umpire was Kei Nishikori. 

“I thought he was wonderful, very relaxed whereas some umpires on tour take it too seriously. I only got 1 warning today so much better than last week,” Federer spoke on Kei’s umpiring.