Nick Kyrgios bombed out of an Australian Open in a blaze of excuses and expletives. He slumped in his chair in Interview Room 1 at Melbourne Park and said he did not particularly care. The backdrop was a Davis Cup rift between Kyrgios, Lleyton Hewitt and Bernie Tomic.
Kyrgios said all tennis talk was boring when more important issues were complicating the world. Issues of life-and-death, issues of right and wrong, issues of social justice.
Well, here’s his chance to go beyond his sport and get stuck into something deeper. Here comes a US Open marching to the beat of the Black Lives Matter movement.
If Kyrgios keeps complaining about having to play, he is wasting a privileged opportunity. The opportunity to go to New York City, where a traditionally thunderous show will be headlined by the African-American Serena Williams, where one of the show courts is named after the African-American Louis Armstrong, and where the finals will be staged inside the magnificent stadium named after the African-American Arthur Ashe. Kyrgios can make a contribution to the greater good. He can get involved, have his say. If he chooses to do nothing more than go there and complain about it, he’s an industrial-scale hypocrite. He’s always saying there’s more to life than tennis … and here is it.
If COVID-19 is scaring him off, fair enough. That’s a whole other story. Pull the pin and leave it at that. But don’t try to spoil it for everyone else by criticising the USTA for wanting to get the show back on the road. Don’t mock the players, many of whom have barely a cent to their names, for wanting to get back to work. You don’t love the sport, and that’s no crime. But some players, and I’m guessing Alex de Minaur is one of them, are so passionate that they will travel to the ends of the earth if it means they can play a tournament, plague or no plague. Crowd or no crowd. Entourage or no entourage.
Kyrgios’s commentary is not especially valid given that his accomplishments are minor. One of the more ridiculous things he has done is tell Australia’s two-time major champion, ex-world number one, ex-Davis Cup winner and ex-Davis Cup captain, Pat Rafter, that he’s “irrelevant, champ.”
And Kyrgios is? A one-time major quarter-finalist. Of course, he’s a heck of a player. Of course, he’s entertaining. Of course, he gets bums on seats. How he spat at an umpire and called him “a fucking tool” without a suspension beggars belief. The Open will be better if he’s in it to win it. It will just as easily go on without him.
Kyrgios may well have been right when he sat in that chair at Melbourne Park in 2018 and said results at the Australian Open, and the Davis Cup tension, was meaningless in the wider world. “I think it’s ridiculous, to be honest,” he said. “With all the issues that are going on in the world … it’s pretty sad.”
If Kyrgios really does have a heart for more deep and meaningful issues, here’s his chance to make a difference. Again. He’s done wonders by kickstarting tennis’s bushfire charity work last summer. He’s learned then that his words and actions can get things moving. He’s played better because of it. He needs a cause bigger than himself. His high point has been giving de Minaur a foreman’s carry at the ATP Cup while shouting, how good! How good!
Why? Because of the team environment. Something bigger than himself. I hope he goes to New York and tells us why black lives matter. He can tell us about his heartache over George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks, if he wants to. He can shine a light on why black lives matter in Australia, if he wants to. He’s worn a Kobe Bryant singlet at Melbourne Park after the American basketballer’s death this year, and that was moving. He can wear a Black Lives Matter singlet in New York, if he wants to. He can make tennis seem a bit less ridiculous, if he wants to. Or he can go and do nothing but complain about being there. What a shame – and waste – if he takes that path.
Williams is in.
“I really cannot wait,” she says. That’s huge. That’s a green light for the event to go ahead. With bells on. No fans? That’s not quite true. There will be millions of fans. They’ll just be watching on TV. They still exist.
Hollywood actors don’t have packed houses when they’re filming their scenes. But they know there’s still an audience. Williams has respiratory issues that can be complicated by COVID-19. But she’s in. The deaths of Floyd and Brooks will have cut her to the core; her half-sister, Yetunda Price, was shot and killed in 2003. But she’s in. She will wear the BLM movement on her sleeve.
She knows she has an opportunity to have her say, to represent her people. Kyrgios does not have the latter, but he has the former. He’s popular. People are listening. He has always said he wants something bigger than tennis. Well, here it is. The BLM push isn’t a reason to stay away. It’s a reason to go.
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