Nick Kyrgios: “God help me if I’m playing at 30”

Nick Kyrgios is the most talented tennis player of his generation but his rise has not been without controversy.

Nick Kyrgios pictured at the Mutua Madrid Open tennis tournament. Picture: Getty

A headline in The Australian newspaper once posed the question “Nick Kyrgios: Breath of fresh air or a total d***head?” The article went on to proclaim Kyrgios as the most exciting thing in tennis but, as he sits down for interview, a reputation inevitably precedes the punkish young man.

He is the sport’s new rock star, complete with chain around his neck, entourage in tow, and an edgy, almost dangerous, presence. He has been hailed as the future of tennis yet says: “I definitely don’t love the sport.”

Chatting to Kyrgios must be like playing him - you never quite know what to expect from the other side of the net. He is engaging one moment, game for a laugh when the photographer requests he douses himself with water.

But he also loves to give off an air of cool indifference, especially when talking about the sport in which he excels. “There is zero chance that Nick Kyrgios will be playing tennis when he’s 30 years old,” he says. “There’s absolutely no chance. I don’t know how long my career will be but God help me if I am playing tennis at 30. There are so many more things to this world than tennis for me. Not tennis at 30. Please.” Not even for fun.

In one breath, he declares that he can become the world’s top player, then quickly adds: “No 1, No 20, it’s no big deal.”

Nick Kyrgios celebrates a match point against Roger Federer on day five of the Mutua Madrid Open tennis tournament. Picture: Getty

As he switches moods, between enthusiastic and offhand, it is easy to imagine Kyrgios as a child at school, easily distracted. If he were a 12-year-old, they would check his attention span. Perhaps they still should. “I get a bit bored out there on court at times,” he admits.

That struggle to focus is one explanation for how he can lurch from sublime tennis, and a highlights reel of outrageously spectacular shots, to the many controversies and countless code violations that have tested his relationship with the tennis public, particularly in Australia.

The hope of his handlers, loitering a little nervously not knowing what he will say next, is that a burgeoning record as the hottest young player on the circuit will come to far surpass his ability to make the wrong sort of headlines. His form is certainly encouraging. Kyrgios’s record of five victories over top-ten players in 2016 is better than anyone apart from Novak Djokovic. In a few short years, he has soared up the rankings and now, at the age of just 21, sits in the top 20. There is no one younger above him. With this trajectory, Kyrgios will soon be a top-ten player.

Not bad for someone who insists he would much prefer to be a basketball player. Brought up in Canberra by a Greek father and Malaysian mother, the third of three children says that basketball remains his greatest passion.

If you want to get him animated, ask about the NBA finals and the phenomenon that is Steph Curry or the Boston Celtics being knocked out.

Tennis? His voice slips into monotone as he says that he barely watches the sport. So why choose it? “When I was 14 I had to pick,” he says. “My parents were pretty strong pushing me into tennis. They probably thought it was easier to make it in tennis. I definitely liked basketball a lot better. But it didn’t work out too badly, I guess.”

He blossomed, becoming the No 1-ranked junior in the world by 2013, winning the boys’ Australian Open. “It happened very fast for me,” he says. “I was playing Challengers and Futures and all of a sudden facing some of the greatest in the world.” And beating them.

At Wimbledon in 2014, aged 19, he saved a record nine match points to beat Richard Gasquet, the No 13 seed, in five sets. “There is no doubt he’s the real deal,” Pat Cash, a compatriot and former Wimbledon champion, declared. “He has unbelievable talent.”

Nick Kyrgios of Australia reacts during his match against Rafael Nadal. Picture: Getty

When Kyrgios then smashed Rafael Nadal, the then world No 1, off Centre Court in four extraordinary sets to reach the quarter-finals, it was not just Australia but the sporting world that woke up to his daring shot-making and seemingly irresistible self-belief.

“Confidence-wise, ever since that day playing Rafa on Centre Court, I felt then I could have beaten anyone and that’s pretty much carried through,” he says.

The next year, after first making the quarter-finals at the Australia Open, he showed his prowess again on the grass of SW by making the fourth round, but this time started to make headlines for the wrong reasons. In losing to Gasquet, he seemed to tank in one game, not even bothering to try to return serve. The crowd jeered.

“I won the next set,” he says, defensively. “I was just trying to save a bit of energy and regroup for the third and fourth set. That match was a tough loss.”

But along with other bursts of temper at officials and occasionally fans - “where do you think you’re going?” he asked one spectator leaving his seat in Melbourne last year - he came to be seen less as cocky, more a brat.

In August last year, not long after his Wimbledon trouble, came the infamous sledge in Montreal when, playing Stan Wawrinka, Kyrgios was caught by an on-court microphone telling the Swiss: “Kokkinakis banged your girlfriend. Sorry to tell you that mate.”

Kyrgios’s reference to Thanasi Kokkinakis, his friend and fellow Australian tennis player, was below the belt. After more aggro, Shane Warne penned an open letter on Facebook, on behalf of the Australian sporting public, telling Kyrgios not to “waste his talent”. “You’re testing our patience mate, show us what you’re made of & how hungry you are to be the best in the world,” the legendary Australian cricketer wrote. Kyrgios responded by saying that he “didn’t think any of us were perfect at 20”.

A young Nick Kyrgios.

As a junior, he says that his mother and brother would have to kick him out of bed to go training. The game came very easily, almost too easily.

“It’s a gift and a curse,” he says. “Ever since I was young I was always at the top of my age group. There’s probably a lot of people on tour that have to work a lot harder.”

He was always trying to pull off some outrageous shot, often unnecessarily. “Sometimes I get too creative when I should keep it simple,” he says. “One of my coaches always used to say, ‘When people watch you, you don’t have to try and go for that extra shot.’ ”

But he adds: “It keeps me entertained and wanting to play.”

He talks of needing to find motivation. He is a natural competitor, sometimes a fiery one. But he admits that his motivation goes up and down. I suggest that a sports psychologist might be useful.

“I have seen a couple,” he says. “But I can’t really focus for long enough. I can’t really take it seriously. They are trying to find what fuels you, motivates you. But it’s tough. One week I am motivated, one week I am not. So I walked away. Not my thing.”

If he takes advice, it is from family, Ajla Tomljanovic, his girlfriend and doubles partner (who is ranked 113), or from Andy Murray, who he says is one of his few good friends on the circuit.

Kyrgios sees parallels with Murray growing up, and how a fickle public can quickly learn to appreciate someone. “When Andy won at Wimbledon, you all loved him,” he says. “When he didn’t win, you didn’t like him.”

It is not that Murray changed, he says, just the perceptions. And he expects the same to happen to him. “I think a lot of it is just being misunderstood,” he says.

“They are only judging you on what you have done on a tennis court. They have no idea how you are as a person. Half the people have never even gone into being a professional and competing at a decent level. They are just amateurs. They don’t know what it’s like to be out there. A lot of top players have been through it; Andy, Djokovic. He had a couple of tough years but he obviously figured it out and now he’s had this success.”

He expects to turn around opinions, mostly by winning. In February, he won his first ATP World Tour title in Marseilles when he upset Marin Cilic in the final of the Open 13. With typical idiosyncrasy, he broke into pidgin French in his victory speech to declare: “J’aime fromage.”

“It was a monkey off my back,” he says. “I learnt a lot in the last year.”

There have still been outbursts but it was notable that when Kitty Chiller, chef de mission of Australia’s Olympic Committee, recently questioned whether Kyrgios’s behaviour might embarrass the team at this summer’s Games in Rio de Janeiro, Tennis Australia (TA) came rushing to his defence.

“Since the disciplinary action taken against Nick last year, he’s made a concerted effort to improve his performance and behaviour, and full credit to him,” Steve Healy, president of TA, said. “His performances this year have been markedly improved and it’s obvious he’s showing more maturity.”

Performing well in the Olympics or Davis Cup would certainly help to mend his popularity back home. There have been questions about his commitment to Davis Cup but he insists that he would love to emulate Murray with Team GB.

“If myself and Bernard [Tomic] won the Davis Cup, we’d be the greatest Aussies of the last ten years,” he says. “That’s the way it works. I’d love for it to happen.”

You sense from such comments that he does want to be liked - he just does not like to admit it. It is cooler to say, “I don’t care, I’ll just carry on being me”.

It fits his rock star image to say that he has no love for the sport, inevitably drawing parallels with Andre Agassi who wrote in his acclaimed autobiography Open of “hating tennis”.

Kyrgios sighs when I ask if he has read the Agassi book. “No. But I’ve been told to about 500 times,” he says. “I haven’t opened a page. Reading is not my favourite thing to do. I can’t open books.”

Does he understand the similarities? “100 per cent. He [Agassi] showed you can still be pretty successful without, you know, loving the sport.”

So why not read it? “I’d rather play computer games,” he says.

He does not want to show he cares, but he does. His hands and arms contain tattoos, some for family, such as the age that his grandmother died, but also messages to himself, such as one that reads “Inspire Others”.

“I think it’s pretty important,” he says. “That’s the gift I have got on a tennis court. People think it’s pretty cool what I am doing and chase a career like mine.” Another on his forearm reads “Time is Running Out” though, curtly, he declines to say why.

At 21, he has plenty of time to reach his goals. And he does have them, despite affecting otherwise. While he says that he feels most comfortable at the US Open, among American crowds “who like a show, the hype and entertainment”, it is Wimbledon he most wants to win. And he thinks he can one day.

“If I am serving well and playing with a lot of energy, I don’t feel there’s many people can beat me over five sets on grass,” he says. “I always feel comfortable at Wimbledon. My record there is 7-2.”

He thinks he has a grand-slam event victory in him but push him on his ambitions, his potential to be the best in the world, and he quickly resumes that air of insouciance. “It’s only tennis,” he says.

It suits him to pretend not to care. Perhaps he hopes it will reduce expectations. But the higher he climbs, knocking on the door of the elite, the less plausible his claims of indifference will become.

The Times