Croatia and Japan tied at Davis Cup

Ivo Karlovic beat Kei Nishikori 6-4, 6-4, 6-3 to leave Croatia tied 1-1 with Japan in the first round of the Davis Cup World Group.

Go Soeda scored a 6-7 (3), 3-6, 6-4, 6-3, 7-5 win over Ivan Dodig.

Karlovic overpowered Nishikori with 18 aces in the day’s second singles.

“I tried to mix my shots a lot and not rally a lot with him,” Karlovic said. “I try to win as quickly as I can on every point and I was trying to be as aggressive as I could.”

“I just couldn’t find my rhythm at all,” Nishikori said. “I had lot of unforced errors and failed to get into rallies. He served very well today. Against a big server, you can’t drop your service games so easily.”

Two errors by Nishikori in the ninth game sealed the win for Croatia and left the series wide open going into the doubles.

I’m not used to playing that kind of player, so it wasn’t easy for me,” Nishikori said. “My main weapon is groundstrokes but Ivo’s serve put me under pressure and I wasn’t able to take points off him.’

Saturday’s doubles will feature Karlovic and Lovro Zovko against Tatsuma Ito and Yuichi Sugita, while Sunday’s reverse singles will see Nishikori face Dodig and Soeda against Karlovic.