Nick Kyrgios has been a breath of fresh air in an era of drab baseliners. Photo: Tennis ACT.
Across social media, many people are expressing their glee at the early demise of Nick Kyrgios at the Australian Open.
But few will admit that the tournament will be poorer for his absence.
In an era of drab baselining robots, the flamboyant Canberra tennis star has been a breath of fresh air. The sport needs him more than he needs tennis.
Like him or loathe him, it appears everyone wants to watch him. Ratings for his first-round match against Brit Jacob Fearnley were through the roof, reaching a peak of 2.5 million, according to media market researcher OzTam. Kyrgios out-rated Seven News, the Big Bash cricket and even Home and Away.
For an injured player who’d barely hit a ball this past year, Kyrgios put on a great show on Monday night. His forehand was booming and we got to see the showman-like underarm serves, tweeners and behind-the-back shots. There were also the trademark tantrums, byplay with the crowd and talking to himself – like when he complained “I can’t f***** serve”.
The unpredictability of his game makes him so much more watchable than most of his peers. It would be a shame if this was his last Australian Open, as he suggested it might be.
Since the demise of the serve-volley game in the 1980s, tennis can often be tedious. Big serve, baseline rally, back, forth, error, rinse, repeat. Breaks are rare in the men’s game and some players only ever come to the net when it’s time to shake hands.
Press conferences these days are even duller than the matches, but not when Kyrgios is behind the microphone. It’s in this forum that he’s provided champagne entertainment, such as when he turned the tables on a British journalist at Wimbledon 2016 by interrogating him and asking if he’d ever used bad language.
Three years later, he made a female reporter blush when he said he recognised her from the pub the previous night. And then at Wimbledon 2022, he hilariously answered questions while eating sushi with a fork.
It was at that tournament that his on-court efforts captivated the nation, knocking out the highly ranked Stefanos Tsitsipas and pushing the world No 1 Novak Djokovic all the way in the final. It was the best performance by an Australian male at a major tournament in 17 years. And he did it without sacrificing any of his flair or extravagance.
Kyrgios takes us back to the era when the game was full of characters – John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Henri Leconte, Andre Agassi and Yannick Noah. He has made the sport fun again.
Despite healthy crowds at the Australian Open, tennis is not as strong in this country as it used to be. Participation in the junior game is on the decline and the sudden rise of pickleball is likely to erode the player base further.
Tennis needs the likes of Nick Kyrgios to inspire the next generation and attract people turned off by the blandness of the sport. You may disapprove of his attitude, but as Australian players fade and nondescript Europeans dominate the next two weeks, you might just miss him and hope he returns.
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