Seoul 2022: How Yoshihito Nishioka defeated Denis Shapovalov
An analysis of Yoshihito Nishioka's win over Denis Shapovalov in the final of the Eugene Korea Open Tennis Championships in Seoul.
There were plenty of interesting storylines last week.
Barbora Krejcikova regained some form in Tallinn, Novak Djokovic proved he is still superhuman in Tel Aviv, Marc-Andrea Huesler won his first title in Sofia and Maria Sakkari's streak of nervy latter-stage matches continued in Parma.
But the most interesting of the lot was Yoshihito Nishioka's second ATP title win in Seoul. He was great against all of his opponents, particularly against world #2 Casper Ruud in the quarterfinals, but his best win of the week arguably came in the final in straight sets against Denis Shapovalov.
Why was it such an impressive win? Yoshi lost more points overall so how did he manage to come through in the end?
Let me walk you through why the match was so interesting 🎉
Nishioka's Game
Firstly, how does Yoshihito Nishioka generally go about breaking down his opponents?
He's 1.7m in height (equal to Diego Schwartzman) and rarely wins free points on his serve. Nishioka instead relies on his two incredible groundies - a lefty forehand fuelled with spin and height and a flat two-handed backhand deals a ton of damage.
Lefty forehand fuelled with spin sound familiar? Nishioka has the same forehand as Rafa - to a degree.
It often lacks the penetration of the Spaniard's. He will generally flatten it out more than Rafa taking on more risk when he's looking to be aggressive down the line. It's also a touch less viscious in spin-rate and he doesn't often look for that forehand inside-out.
He does however possess the ability to lock his opponent into backhand ad-cross-court jail.
For all the improvements Ruud has made to his backhand, he still can't crunch it down the line or flatten it out consistently. Backhand jail either resulted in Ruud redlining (which he couldn't pull off frequently enough) or it resulted in a more reliable change of direction down the line from Nishioka first.
A nightmare for Ruud who would have to had to produce something special to win.
Advantage Shapovalov
The perfect antidote to Nishioka's gruesome groundstrokes?
Enter fellow lefty Denis Shapovalov.
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