Kyrgios is a gift who keeps on giving, but for how long?

Australian tennis has three outstanding talents on the tour. One of them, Ashleigh Barty, is currently ranked No.1 in the women’s game, and has already won a grand slam. The other two are perpetual losers in the men’s draw who are in possession of sporting gifts they appear to resent, and are, in turn, resented for possessing. But if Bernard Tomic and Nick Kyrgios have demonstrated anything to the imperious tennis crowd, it is that winning alone does not make you an interesting player.

Channel 7 would not be very good at its business if it did not know this, and even prioritised Kyrgios’ match over Barty’s in round one at a grand slam event. Barty, now a proven winner, is a story if she loses a round one match against expectation. It doesn’t take much courage to set aside an idea of sexism, and acknowledge that Kyrgios is a curiosity who, in spite of himself, is the preferred drawcard for a commercial television station committed to airing the entire tournament, most of which, by Kyrgios’ own admission, will occur without him.

Nick Kyrgios on the court against Rafael Nadal this week. Credit: AP

Television has for nearly 15 years been dealing with one of the most predictable men’s sports in the world. Is it so difficult to comprehend that in Kyrgios it has found what it’s been looking for?

Consider the fickle nature of the commercial narrative, how much scope it gives itself to toy, on one hand, with the idea of Kyrgios as Australian renegade and, on the other, when inevitably he crashes out, the shift to his behaviour being inappropriate or disgusting. It’s a win-win, even when he loses.

All of this creates an arm wrestle between equally small ideas in tennis commentary. One idea is to deliberately antagonise players such as Tomic and Kyrgios, knowing that their reactions will get attention.

The other is to then fashion a sober response to what they say, preferably written by some disappointed defender of the Australian character, containing a few dreary lines about wasted talent and, every plodder’s favourite, an insinuation of un-Australian behaviour.

This routine was at work as usual this week, demonstrated with comical zeal at Wimbledon when a British journalist used the first question of a post-match conference to ask Nick Kyrgios, “Would you have played better if you hadn’t been at the pub last night?”

A pathetic question after an outstanding spectacle, and one answered with verve by Kyrgios, who replied instantly: “You look way too excited to ask that question. You must have a really boring life.”

Good luck finding in world tennis a person capable, let alone willing, to say something that accurate to a room full of reporters. There is an ethical threshold that the mere observer should not cross in sport, and does so at the risk of embarrassment.

Trying to project onto the participants of a sport the ways in which that sport should be played is an example of that threshold being crossed, and although Kyrgios and Tomic have not contributed many trophies to the Australian cabinet, they have at least provided the mirror in which some observers can better see themselves.

Of course, the most unrealised and depressing thread in the ongoing saga of these two players is an essentially racist idea that disguises itself as a defence of the real Australian sportsman, that most desirable player who not only tries his hardest but wants to do it for us. This idea was nakedly demonstrated by Dawn Fraser a few years ago, who suggested on national television that if they don’t like the country, the boys should “Go back to where they came from”. It was an almost too perfect white Australian response to Tomic and Kyrgios having no interest in the Olympics, which, as professional tennis players, makes perfect sense.

It can’t go on like this for much longer, the cycle of scandal and critique, the occasional television montage of redemption any time Kyrgios advances beyond the second round of a tournament. It can’t continue to be interesting, all of this losing, and the empty ideas about change and the future being different, if only they cared. The most disappointing thing about these two players is not that they will ever win like Ash Barty can win, but that the nature of their loses will stop being interesting, or become too depressing for even the players to continue with.

In fact, the tail of Tomic’s meteor is barely emitting any light at all, but for the glow of some minor disgrace that only he could be subjected to, such as having his “winnings” confiscated for losing in a fashion that was not close enough to how a winner should lose at Wimbledon.

Nobody can suggest with a straight face that nothing Kyrgios does on a tennis court deserves criticism, but who among those criticising him is also willing to acknowledge that he is in some way doing them a favour? He, and the tormented Tomic have been outsiders, stylistically, ethnically and attitudinally, who have pressed with their antics on the other side of a tennis scale historically heavy with boredom and ritual and rules.

Besides, it’s not the Logies. The men and women of the metaphorical battlefield establish their own bonafides despite our interest, or our disdain, and there would be more dignity in it for people to remember this, and remember that they are only bystanders, kneeling by a fast-moving river, trying to see what the water carries.