Has Nick Kyrgios really transformed into a tennis nice guy?

Nick Kyrgios fires up at umpire Marijana Veljovic when the technology went against him

Remember how Andre Agassi used to sport a mullet, a headband and a bad attitude and got up everyone’s noses? Then he went bald and married Steffi Graf and suddenly transformed into the genial nice guy of world tennis.

Well the same thing could be happening to Nick Kyrgios – and he gets to keep his hair.

Kyrgios woke up the sleepy Australian Open on Wednesday night with a stirring victory over Frenchman Ugo Humbert, ripping winners and landing trick shots.

He fought back from match-point down in the fourth set to win it in five, producing the sort of scintillating tennis that once made him the brightest prospect on the tour.

Is this the same player who became something of a tennis brat’s tennis brat? The bloke who didn’t really care much about winning grand slams, didn’t think it was worth getting properly fit or employing a coach.

“Personally, I think (hiring a coach) is a little bit of a waste of money because I think they get paid way too much,” Kyrgios said in June last year. “And, for me, I don’t have a goal of winning grand slams. I just want to do it my way, have fun with it and just play.”

Doing it his way often appeared to involve smashing his racquet when things didn’t go his way, abusing umpires, abusing the occupants of his own box and generally sneering at tennis.

But then along came COVID-19 and Kyrgios retreated to Canberra to become the conscience of the tennis world.

When world No 1 Novak Djokovic organised the disastrous Adria Tour in defiance of pandemic lockdowns in Serbia and Croatia, partying shirtless with fans in a COVID-spreading frenzy, it was Kyrgios who called him out. Meanwhile, the Australian is cementing his nice-guy reputation through his NK Foundation, which works to support underprivileged young people.

The result is a rush to embrace Kyrgios as some sort of sporting role model. He’s our Nick. A good bloke as well as a sparkling tennis talent.

Some of the admiration has even been retrospective. ABC Radio National presenter Patricia Karvela tweeted on Thursday morning: “I liked Kyrgios when you were all off him JUST SAYING.”

“Me too,” came the replies in their thousands.

But aside from having a crack at Djokovic and diverting some of his millions to charity, has Kyrgios really changed?

In Wednesday night’s match the old Nick was well and truly on display on several occasions, most notably when the net-cord vibration detecting device malfunctioned.

Having already barked at family members in his box and received code violations for destroying a racquet and hitting a ball at the umpire’s chair, Kyrgios embarked on several expletive-laden tirades about the technology.

“It’s bullshit, look at the score,” he shouted at the umpire at one stage. “It’s ruining the game. It’s ruining the game. You don’t understand it’s f..king one-all in the fifth set.”

There’s a fair chance that experienced chair umpire Marijana Veljovic understood only too well.

She actually cut him some slack by declining to impose a code violation for an audible obscenity – which would have triggered a game penalty.

Kyrgios appears to have a point about the dodgy technology – he is not the first player to complain about it.

To reduce the number of people on court in the pandemic, Australian Open organisers have replaced human line judges with electronic sensors. And as is always the case with such technology, it sometimes goes awry.

But screaming abuse at the chair umpire, who has no control over the technology, is not going to solve anything.

Kyrgios may well be on the way to growing up, but it is pretty clear he still has a way to go.

I wish him well in his clash with Dominic Thiem on Friday night. But more importantly, I wish him all the best in his quest to rid himself of the tennis brat tag. It may be tougher than beating the Austrian champion.