Kei Nishikori, who defeated Milos Raonic last year to win the Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships 2014, will open against young gun Borna Coric in Tokyo. The 25 year old from Shimane is looking to cement his place at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals. Nishikori currently has 3770 Emirates ATP Race To London points, good for sixth overall.

The 18 year old Coric is in the midst of a breakout season. The Croat is currently No. 38, and was ranked as high as No. 33 in July of this year. The players have never faced each other at tour-level, and Coric’s last win over a Top-10 player came in February against Andy Murray (Dubai QF).

In the top half, No. 1 seed Stan Wawrinka begins his Tokyo campaign against veteran Radek Stepanek. Stepanek, who has battled injury in the past year, has only managed to take part in 11 tour-level matches in 2015 (8-3). This would be an opportune moment for Wawrinka to get a second win over the Czech in six meetings, as he is trying to add to his 5505 Emirates ATP Race To London points (4^th) heading into the final months of the season.

An intriguing first-round matchup is the one pitting eighth seed Grigor Dimitrov and unseeded Benoit Paire. A comparison of the players’ Emirates ATP Rankings and year-to-date records favours the 24 year-old Bulgarian (19^th, 27-17), but Paire (32^nd, 19-14) won their first FedEx ATP Head2Head matchup in the first round of the 2012 US Open, then pushed Dimitrov to three sets in Stockholm 2013 before succumbing.