MELBOURNE
– A few months ago, Matthew McCounaghey gave Nick Kyrgios some advice: what if you fell in love with tennis, what if you made a conscious decision to fall in love with tennis? But the Australian went another way: in the words of Andy Roddick, he fell in love with ‘likes’.
Knocked out of the Australian Open on Monday by Britain’s 86th-ranked Jacob Fearnley, Kyrgios is the closest thing there is to a tennis Donald Trump: provocative, vociferous and disrespectful, definitely already much more comfortable in the virtuality of social media, like Trump, than on the rectangle of the tennis court.
‘At this point he is a tennis influencer. He lives for likes, he lives in the comments section’, Roddick summed up in one of the last exchanges that crossed him with the Australian.
The trigger was Lleyton Hewitt’s son Cruz, who at 16 received a wild card to play in the tournament’s qualifying. – 16, the same age as his father was when he won his first ATP tour-level tournament, Adelaide 1998.
The young Hewitt posted a photo on social media with Jannik Sinner after a training session he shared with the Italian. Kyrgios made his entrance in the comments section of the post.
‘Love ya Cruz but this is wild,’ adding “Cooked post” with a needle emoji.
He also wrote ‘Thought we were boys’ with several broken heart emojis.
Roddick reacted on his podcast, Served: ‘But what I have an issue with is the hypocrisy with which he picks and chooses when to levy judgement on others while also wanting you to digest the context of his comments – the latest being towards Cruz Hewitt who practised with Jannik Sinner.’
No one attacked Sinner with more dedication than Kyrgios, obsessed with the Italian’s doping case, the big tennis controversy of recent months. But Roddick believes the Australian crossed a serious boundary.
‘So Cruz Hewitt is 16 years old, son of Lleyton, the toughest competitor that I have ever played in my life. (Cruz) gets to hit with a guy who is number one in the world at the Australian Open. That is a big deal. Imagine as an almost 30-year-old man, going into the comments of a 16-year-old who is (hitting with) the best player in the world.
If you think (Sinner) is guilty or not guilty, it’s still a moment when you get to do that. That’s a big moment and to simply post a picture and then have this guy go into the comments and make it all about himself, (commenting) ‘I thought we were bros’. The defence was all made that it was a joke. The lack of awareness you have with bringing trolls and all of the worst of tennis fandom into a 16-year-old’s comments is ridiculous. It’s ridiculous.’
Roddick had his prey trapped, who shook himself and escaped by an unexpected route.
‘It’s a joke mateeeee hahaha,’ he wrote.
The truth is that it is striking that Kyrgios has become a kind of tennis conscience measurer, the man who dictates what is right and what is wrong. Who gave him that power, what enables him to have it?
His tennis career? He won seven titles, reached 13 in the world ranking and played in a Wimbledon final. Not bad, but a far cry from his tennis potential. It is clear that a place in the Newport Hall of Fame does not await him.
His on-court behaviour? Just ask Rafael Nadal about that ball in the chest that Kyrgios threw at him at Wimbledon 2019. And remember the Australian’s response when asked if he apologised: ‘I was going for him, yeah. I wanted to hit him square in the chest. I’m not going to apologize.
His off-court behaviour? Roddick made a point of recalling that Kyrgios admitted in court to smashing his then-girlfriend, Chiara Passari, to the ground in the middle of a fierce argument. That was on 10 January 2021, just four years ago.
‘Pure hypocrisy,’ summed up the American.
And he is right, although Kyrgios will get his way. He says he will play the remaining Grand Slams of the year and the Davis Cup, but his defeat in Australia showed he is already an ex-tennis player. Television awaits him (again), enamoured of his incontinence.
Because Kyrgios was born for social media. Kane Cornes, a former Australian football player (AFL), criticised Kyrgios, the ‘most disappointing Australian athlete ever’, for dominating the local tennis conversation for weeks.
The almost ex-tennis player’s reaction was fierce: “Gotta love comments from an athlete who didn’t play a global sport ???? appreciate the kind works brother x.”
And that was not all: “I didn’t even know who you were to be fair.”
What about Matthew McConaughey? He tried, but couldn’t. Just read this exchange between the American actor and the soon-to-be former-tennis player from Australia.
Kyrgios: You’re my coach, this is the pep talk you’re giving me in the locker room before my return to tennis in the Australian Open. Give me like 20 seconds of what you’re telling me.
McConaughey: Look man, you never had a coach. I’m not gonna come in here and tell you to do something that you don’t want to do. Let’s talk about this. You still have room to love this game.
Kyrgios: That’s true.
McConaughey: You like it. You have talent at it. That’s connecting the dots. How about we just open to go to that place.
Kyrgios: Maybe I love it.
McConaughey: What if you are open to loving this game and loving your ability that not many people have to play this game. How many people have the ability to play this game?
Kyrgios: I feel pretty motivated.
McConaughey: We don’t need ‘rah rah’. We do something when we feel it in mind, body and spirit and there’s a joy to it. Even if you don’t go on and play for 10 years. Starting at the Australian Open, think of it as more than an affair. What if you just got married to tennis?
A revealing dialogue: Kyrgios, blessed with a rare talent, never married and never will marry tennis. It is not even certain that there was a courtship, much more likely it was an affair, or several successive affairs.
Kyrgios, the Trump of tennis
That’s why John McEnroe, watching Fearnley knock off the Trump of tennis on Monday night, asked himself a question mid-broadcast: ‘Is there any way, you could go down and replay that tape of the Matthew McConaughey suggestion?’.
Too late, it makes no sense any more.
And never forget: Kyrgios is the one who said that three-time Wimbledon champion Boris Becker’s serve was worse than his. And that he didn’t remember watching the German in the (so forgettable) Netflix show ‘Break Point’. A genius, on and off the court.
