Tennis

Nick Kyrgios: ‘I was trying my nuts off at 2 am in the morning’

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Nick Kyrgios is one of the most iconic characters on the circuit. Genius and debauchery are the most suitable characteristics for the talented 27-year-old player, a candidate for the next Australian Open as one of the possible favorites for the title. The Canberra native, just over 600km from “Happy Slam” host Melbourne, has never really posted any great results in his native Major in recent years, apart from a quarterfinal in 2015, when he was still unmatched. 20 years ago and it premiered on the big world stages. Now things have changed and Kyrgios has a different media awareness of him. The last one was undoubtedly his best season, culminating in the Wimbledon final, lost to his new great friend Novak Djokovic. The eccentric Australian spoke before the microphones of The Age newspaper, and offered interesting revelations: from predictions about his positioning in the next slam, to his relationship with former player Ashleigh Barty: “I think I go into this tournament with a different feeling around me. I am one of the favorites. I’m usually the underdog… but after the year I’ve had, I’m a favorite so it’s something new for me. It’s the first time I’ve reached a Grand Slam and I really feel like I’m one of the guys who can bring home the trophy and break the door down. Once I enter the field, normally I feel that I have nothing to lose and I try to put on a show, but this time I have to find a balance”, he stated, “Now I just try to internalize the pre-game tension, the anxiety, just I try to get out and hang out with my team as much as possible. I don’t think there is any other player, especially in Australia, who is in the spotlight of the press as much as I am; it is a daily battle, something that is there every day. I try to accept it and use it as a privilege, but it is very difficult.”

Kyrgios recalls his 2022 US Open quarterfinal loss 

Speaking about his bad-boy image in the tennis world, Nick Kyrgios recently slammed the media for only focusing on his moments of frustration on the court. “Well, I’m not thinking about it but I got told that it goes to charity,” Kyrgios said. “As soon as they told me that, I was just trigger happy, I was just f*cking smacking [gestures smashing a racquet]. It’s unfair, in a way, because a match can go on for hours like at the US Open in the recent past, I played a match that went on for four hours, and the media showed the last 30 seconds of me smashing a racquet. That’s what they choose to put out globally,” he said. “It’s like what happened to the other four-hour segment when I was trying my nuts off at 2 am in the morning. They just choose to show when I’m getting frustrated,” he added.

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