Nick Kyrgios thinks his best tennis is still ahead of him but is aware that the clock is ticking. “Tennis is a small window,” the flamboyant Australian says. “You’re not going to have unlimited chances, unlimited opportunities. You can’t waste time.”
Four years after announcing his arrival on the world stage by beating Rafael Nadal in the fourth round at Wimbledon – and hitting an unforgettable through-the-legs half-volley winner from the baseline in the process – the 23-year-old has still to make better progress at a Grand Slam event. Two quarter-final appearances in his 19 Grand Slam tournaments is a meagre return for a player widely acknowledged as one of the most talented in the modern game.
As he has always done, the world No 19 continues to delight and frustrate. At the Fever-Tree Championships at Queen’s Club last week Kyrgios played some excellent tennis in beating Andy Murray, Kyle Edmund and Feliciano Lopez and delighted the crowd with some outrageous shot-making. By the end of the tournament, however, he had been fined the equivalent of £13,000 after television cameras caught him making suggestive gestures with a water bottle during his semi-final defeat by Marin Cilic.
The latter incident marred what has been a good build-up to Wimbledon for Kyrgios, who is happy just to be playing again after missing the French Open because of an elbow injury. Having also had to deal with a recurring hip problem in recent years, the Australian freely admits that, until now, he has paid for his own lack of commitment to his physical work.
“I just don’t do enough of the professional side of things,” he told The Independent. “These are injuries that have come from things which I haven’t done years ago and which have caught up with me now.”
It is never too late to make amends, however, and Kyrgios has addressed his fitness issues by hiring a new physical trainer. He is working with Ashcon Rezazadeh, whose previous clients include Victoria Azarenka, Dan Evans and the boxer Anthony Joshua.
“I’m doing everything I can now, which is a step forward,” Kyrgios said. “Hiring a trainer has been a massive help for me. I think that’s definitely part of the reason why I’ve been able to play and serve so well, because I’ve been doing other things off the court.”
Kyrgios admitted that he might even have taken off the rest of this year had it not been for Rezazadeh. “If I had been healthy I would love to have played the French,” he said. “You don’t really know how many years you have in the sport and you can’t really take Grand Slams for granted. It was just the right thing to do for the moment for my elbow.
“I wasn’t ready at all to play best-of-five-sets on the clay. It was the right thing to do for Wimbledon, for my career, just to get it right for the rest of the year. If I was still feeling my elbow now I would probably just call it a year and try to get that better for next year. So I think I made the right decision.”
Nevertheless, Kyrgios does not believe that injuries have affected his progress over the years. “I don’t think anything to do with my previous results has come from physical issues,” he said. “I think it’s all mental. It’s all the mental side of things for me. Everyone has little niggles here and there. No one wakes up and gets out of bed feeling 100 per cent to play. It’s all mental for me.”
Nick Kyrgios thinks his best is still ahead of him (Getty)
One criticism regularly directed at Kyrgios is his failure to appoint a full-time senior coach since he parted company with Todd Larkham three years ago. Kyrgios subsequently worked briefly with Sebastian Grosjean, has trained regularly with Matt Reid, his occasional doubles partner, and often has Lleyton Hewitt, his Davis Cup captain, in his corner, but he has chosen not to appoint a permanent coach in the conventional sense.
Kyrgios does not see the need to do so. “I feel like I’m one of the best players in the world tactically,” he said. “I know how to play any opponent. I know what their weaknesses are from the get-go. I can figure a player out within the first five or 10 minutes of hitting with them. I don’t think that from that side of the game, getting a coach is really necessary.”
So how would he prepare a game plan if he was facing an opponent he does not know? “I just serve big and play big,” Kyrgios said. “That’s my game style.”
He added: “Every time I step out on the court I’m going to do the same thing. I’m going to play the way I play. And usually if my intensity’s right to play well and to play hard, I usually win anyway.”
The Australian is ranked 19th in the world (Getty)
Does he work on some of the remarkable “exhibition” shots that he is always liable to play, such as the extraordinary through-the-legs lob that won a point against Edmund last week?
“I don’t really practise them, but when I get the opportunity to play them in practice I’ll go for it,” he said. “It’s just something that I’ve been doing for a long time. I’m not just trying to do it to please the crowd. I just do it because it’s fun for me. I like going for it.”
Does he think those shots can be useful weapons in that they can surprise opponents? “I don’t know they feel,” Kyrgios said. “I don’t think they would feel surprised. I think they would feel pretty pissed off. But what can you do?”
Kyrgios appears to have a reasonable draw at Wimbledon, where he will play Denis Istomin in the first round, the winner to face Robin Haase or Marius Copil. He is then seeded to meet Kei Nishikori in the third round and Alexander Zverev in the fourth, with Dominic Thiem and Rafael Nadal potential opponents in the quarter-finals and semi-finals respectively.
Does he agree that Wimbledon is the Grand Slam tournament where he has the best chance of success? “I think so,” Kyrgios said. “I had pretty good success on the grass when I was small and growing up, whether it was the nationals in Australia or the juniors. I always played well on it. Now I have success on it, so, yes, I think it’s the best surface for me.”
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