He Australian Open is approaching (January 18-February 1) and also the debate: Does Nick Kyrgios deserve an invitation to play it? At the moment, five of the eight available ones that have been awarded have not been for him. And neither does he bad boy of tennis contributed a lot in Brisbanewhere he received a wild card that wasted falling in his debut against the American Aleksandar Kovacevic (58th) 6-3 and 6-4.
Kyrgios, now 30 years old and 670th in the ranking, was the great hope aussie In recent years, especially after the Wimbledon final that he played in 2022. But chaos and inconsistency have always been greater than his talent. The controversial Australian came from playing the, in the end, also controversial ‘Battle of the sexes’ against Aryna Sabalenka, a blurred match that she won. But it also came from not play any match since March 2025at the Miami Masters 1,000, due to discomfort in his wrist.
And in the physique Kyrgios finds the explanation for his decline. “I had my wrist reconstructed and my knee operated on twice. Thanasi (Kokkiakis), Del Potro, Thiem or Nishikori are examples… If we look at some of these players who were competing to win Grand Slams, we see that there are parts of the body that simply fail,” he analyzed after losing in Brisbane.
The aura, sometimes unconscious, of a future winner of a major has disappeared. His record includes seven titles. But things have to change a lot for him to continue gaining weight. The first one to stop believing in him seems to be Kyrgios. “Sometimes it is difficult for me to even go out to train, and that is not easy to assume,” he acknowledges, while evoking better times: “There was a moment in my life in 2022, or when I won several titles in a year, when I had a kind of delusion: I believed I was the best in the world. When you’re at the top of the sport, I really thought I was invincible. I went out on the court and thought that no one could beat me,” recalled a talent who would now settle for an invitation to the Grand Slam in his homeland, in which he lost in the first round last year. “If I continue playing, it is to earn money,” he admitted bluntly.
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