WIMBLEDON, England – All white is the dress code at Wimbledon, the oldest and most traditional of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments. So when Nick Kyrgios wears a black hat for his interview on the track, he’s sending a message.
And that’s what he did on Saturday night at No. 1 track, after his emotional, fireworks-filled victory, 6-7 (2), 6-4, 6-3, 7-6 (7) before the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas, the seed number 4.
When Wimbledon reaches its second week, the women’s tournament is very open and there is potential for a men’s final of Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal, which every day seems more inevitable. And then there is Kyrgios, a dangerous and disruptive force that has so much pure talent, but is so temperamental and combustible, and so attracted and disgusted by his chosen profession that sport cannot control or ignore it.
He plays when he feels like it, then disappears for months, only to wreak havoc again and offer a theater that monopolizes the headlines.
“Everywhere I go, I see full stadiums,” he said after his battle with Tsitsipas. “The media loves to write that I’m bad for the sport, but obviously not.”
Kyrgios is an Australian with immense talent who has an ambivalent relationship with the rigors and requirements of professional tennis. He likes his role as a big outlaw in the game, he is not afraid to jaw, spit or scold judges and referees.
He teaches young track workers not to keep changing chairs provided with fresh towels and bananas. Break rackets. One bounced off the ground and nearly crashed into the face of a ball boy in a tournament in California this year. His rude displays regularly raise tens of thousands of dollars in fines.
He will then return to the court and shoot one of the most dangerous services in the game. He puts himself in a kind of magic clinic to make shots: shots between the legs, right curls, submerged asses, which other players can only dream of.
It’s the time bomb that fills stadiums and has hordes of young fans. It’s both the sport’s worst nightmare and its food ticket – hard to see but also hard not to.
When he loses, it’s always someone else’s fault. When he wins, it’s because he’s overcome all sorts of forces against him: tournament directors, media, the tennis establishment, fans who have thrown racial insults at him.
“No script. No filtering. Unmissable,” is how @ Wimbledon’s Twitter channel said it Saturday night, while Kyrgios, with all his brilliance and discomfort, dominated and attenuated Tsitsipas for three hours.
Throughout the night, Kyrgios chased the chair referee as well as tournament referees and supervisors for failing to breach Tsitsipas after he angrily sent a ball into the crowd, dangerously approaching to hit a fan directly on the walk. Kyrgios claimed the referee would probably have sent him off if he had done the same. (Maybe he’s not wrong about that.)
The almost endless complaints and interruptions shook Tsitsipas. He struggled to maintain composure, complaining to the chair referee that only one person on the court was interested in playing tennis, while the other turned the match into a circus. Then he took matters into his own hands and started trying to hook Kyrgios with his shots. The crowd of more than 10,000 people increased with each confrontation.
It only became more intense after Kyrgios finished off Tsitsipas in the tiebreaker with three unrepeatable shots: a characteristic half volley on the open court; a broken and reverse winner; and a shot from the bottom line that died on the turf beyond Tsitsipas’ reach.
The drama grew as the press conferences of Tsitsipas and Kyrgios fell into an insulting and insulting debate about the setting and who had more friends in the locker room.
Tsitsipas, sure that Kyrgios had intentionally made a mess of the party, and probably said that Kyrgios had won it twice in a month, said that his comrades should unite and establish rules that would control Kyrgios.
“It’s constant harassment, that’s what he does,” Tsitsipas said of Kyrgios. “He intimidates opponents. He was probably a bully himself at school. I don’t like thugs. I don’t like people who depress others. He also has some good traits in his character. But when he, too, it has a very bad side, that if it is exposed, it can really do a lot of harm and harm to the people around it. “
Tsitsipas said he regretted hitting the ball in the crowd, but that he had less remorse for another who hit through the net and on the scoreboard, earning a penalty point.
“I was aiming at my rival’s body, but I lost a lot, a lot,” he said. Then, he added, “When I feel like other people disrespect me and don’t respect what I’m doing from the other side of the track, it’s absolutely normal for me to act and do something about it.”
Kyrgios was watching all this on a nearby television. Minutes later, he sat behind the microphone, wearing that black cap and a T-shirt with Dennis Rodman, the former NBA rebel, and a big smile. Once again, Tsitsipas had created a situation where Kyrgios could overcome him, even allowing him the rare opportunity to take the road and claim to be a kind of innocent.
“He was the one who hit me balls,” he said of Tsitsipas. “It simply came to our notice then. He was the one who took her out of the stadium. “
He described Tsitsipas as “soft” in letting Kyrgios’ conversations with tournament officials reach him.
“We’re not cut from the same cloth,” de Tsitsipas said. “I face guys who are real competitors. If he’s affected by it today, that’s what’s holding him back, because someone can do it and that will leave him out of his game like that. I just think it’s soft. “
Tsitsipas ’mother is a former professional and her father is a tennis coach who raised her children on the tennis court from an early age. Kyrgios is of Greek and Malay descent, and his father painted houses for a living.
“I’m fine in the locker rooms,” continued Kyrgios, who now turned around. “I have a lot of friends, just to let you know. In fact, I’m one of my favorites. I’m ready. He doesn’t like it.”
Then one last dagger.
He said he didn’t take the track to make a friend, to congratulate his opponents on his game, and that he had no idea what he had done to make Tsitsipas so upset that he barely shook hands at the end of the match. .
Every time he has lost, Kyrgios said, even when he has been kicked out of matches, he has looked his rival in the eye and told him he was the best man.
“He wasn’t man enough to do it today,” he said.
The win put Kyrgios in the round of 16, where he will play Brandon Nakashima of the United States on Monday, and two wins in a possible semi-final clash on the center court with Nadal, assuming the 22-time Grand Slam champion can continue to win well. . It would be the ultimate showdown between heroes and villains, a perfect setting for all sorts of potential Kyrgios and leftist explosions, but also, as this Twitter channel said, a must-see theater.
Nadal is known to be one of the true knights of the game, a guardian of tacit codes among players. He has marveled at Kyrgios ’talent and questioned the baggage he brings to the court and the evidence he often creates with referees, especially when his chances of winning begin to be lost.
On Saturday night, after winning his own match and knowing how to talk about the Kyrgios-Tsitsipas fight, Nadal became philosophical when asked when a player crossed the line and if Kyrgios was going too far. It is, he said, a matter of conscience.
“I think everyone should go to bed calmly with the things you’ve done,” Nadal said. “And if you can’t sleep calmly and satisfied with yourself, it’s because you’ve done things that were probably unethical.”
How does Kyrgios sleep? Only he knows.