Tennis: Kyrgios fighting Cash, Rafter and Hewitt before the Australian Open begins

The rift between Nick Kyrgios and the greats of Australian tennis is simmering in the background ahead of next week’s Open.

Nick Kyrgios practises on Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena on Thursday. Picture: Sydney Low / Cal Sport Media/Sipa

Quiet, please? Unlikely. The Happy slam? Not entirely. The long-running feud between Nick Kyrgios and the Australian tennis fraternity is in full swing.

Kyrgios is at loggerheads with Pat Cash, Pat Rafter and Lleyton Hewitt before the Australian Open even starts. And he’s ­received a problematic draw at Melbourne Park.

He starts against run-of-the-mill Russian Roman Safiullin but then come a cast of likely ­opponents who can niggle and nudge and needle him.

In round 2, it’s the talented Frenchman Ugo Humbert. In round 3, the powerhouse Danish teenager Holger Rune. In round 4, Andrey Rublev, the fifth-seeded Russian so volatile he can cast Kyrgios in the role of choirboy. If Kyrgios passes all those pricklish, ticklish tests, he can expect Novak Djokovic to be waiting in the quarter-finals.

Kyrgios versus Safiullin is one thing. Kyrgios versus Cash, Rafter and Hewitt, plus any number of past Australian greats, is forever bubbling and frothing in the background. Multiple Wimbledon champions and former world No.1s have tried to help him – but Kyrgios doesn’t want a bar of it.

“Clueless,” was his description of Rafter on Thursday, fresh off criticising Hewitt for throwing him “under the bus” before the United Cup. He goes back a long way with Cash, the Australian junior Davis Cup captain when Kyrgios was a teenager. Their relationship hit rock bottom at Wimbledon last year.

Cash was aggrieved by Kyrgios’s behaviour in his ­second-round win over Stefanos Tsitsipas. Cash said: “It was abso­lute mayhem. He should have been defaulted. Something’s got to be done about it. It’s just an abso­lute circus. He has brought tennis to the lowest level I can see as far as gamesmanship, cheating, manipulation, abuse.”

On the eve of his final at the All England Club, Kyrgios claimed he was receiving zero encouragement from the golden oldies. “The greats of Australian tennis, they haven’t always been the nicest to me, personally,” he said. “They haven’t always been supportive and they haven’t been supportive these two weeks. So it’s hard for me to read things they say about me. It’s pretty sad because I don’t get any support from ... the past greats.”

Cash’s biggest issue on Thursday was Tennis Australia’s decision to stage a charity exhibition match between Kyrgios and Djokovic on Rod Laver Arena on Friday night. “In what country, in what grand slam – would you have Wimbledon suddenly pulling out Centre Court or Court 1 because Andy Murray needed a practice match?” he said.

Kyrgios took umbrage at Rafter’s claim his “circus” of a doubles run alongside Thanasi Kokkinakis at last year’s Open caused locker room consternation. “If they create drama, create ticket sales and they create people watching, then good on them,” Rafter told the Australian Open: The Happy Slam podcast. “But at what expense, I don’t know. The players are ­really upset.”

Kyrgios responded on Twitter: “He would have absolutely zero idea on what the locker room thinks. Me and kokk have great relationships with most of the players on tour. Guy is ­clueless.”