AFP, Kuala Lumpur :
Top seed Kei Nishikori fought to beat Finland’s Jarkko Nieminen 6-3, 4-6, 6-2 on Saturday to make it into his first Malaysian Open final.
The Japanese hotshot will now face France’s fourth seeded Julien Benneteau, who continued his sterling run in the competition with a 6-4, 6-4 defeat of second seed Ernests Gulbis.
Nishikori, who drew a 5,000 sell-out crowd at the Putra Stadium in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, put in a commanding show for most of the game’s 137 minutes.
Using his trademark baseline power-play to rack quick-points, he surged to a 3-1 lead after initial resistance from the world number 57 before holding the advantage with a 6-3 victory.
The world number eight couldn’t keep up the tempo in the second, as Nieminen began to read his game to take a 3-1 lead, before Nishikori level pegged at 3-3.
