Nick Kyrgios claims he can comeback now and ‘beat 50% of players’
Nick Kyrgios has claimed that he does not ‘want to be kind of crawling to finish line’ of his career, drawing comparisons to Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray.
Kyrgios has played only one competitive ATP match in the last two years, losing in the first round of the Stuttgart Open last year to Yibing Wu.
During this time, the Australian has been dealing with both serious knee and wrist injuries, that have both required invasive surgery.
However, it appears that Kyrgios is now eyeing a comeback after confirming that he would play the Australian Open in 2025.
And when speaking on The Louis Theroux Podcast, Kyrgios suggested that he could have already made his comeback, but explained why he has chosen to take his time.
“I played a match last year…Like I could come back now and beat 50% of players but I don’t want to do that,” said Kyrgios. “Because my fans deserve a better version of myself that I am now on the court.
“I don’t want to just participate and I know the world’s not going to be nice on me when I come back. They’re going to all of a sudden forget that I was out for a year and a half with injuries. They’re just going to think that it’s the Nick Kyrgios that has all the expectation again. So when he loses, it’s not okay.”
Ladies and gentlemen, all the way from the great city of Canberra, the one and only Nick Kyrgios – straight talker, reformed tennis bad boy, and now LT podcast guest – discusses his relationship with Australia, his ups and downs with tennis, his occasionally over the top… pic.twitter.com/eVrgnAPwTb
— Louis Theroux (@louistheroux) October 29, 2024
Now at 29-years-old, Kyrgios has also been very open about the fact that he will likely not be competing on the ATP Tour for many more years.
The 2022 Wimbledon finalist backed this up when speaking to Theroux, admitting that he does not want to retire like Nadal and Murray have.
“I look at how Andy Murray’s doing it now, and how Rafael is going out, I don’t want to be like that either, I don’t want to be kind of crawling to the finish line in a sense,” explained Kyrgios.
Kyrgios went onto praise Murray, implying that the Brit is second only to ‘The Big Three’ of Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer.
“What Andy Murray’s achieved in this sport is second to basically no one, like, unless you’re Novak, Federer, or Nadal, like, the next person is Andy Murray,” Kyrgios added. “It’s like you’ve achieved everything. You deserve to go out, I think, a little bit more gracefully than he’s done. I think, that the surgeries, the pain, it’s just not worth it, in my opinion.”
The Louis Theroux Podcast is available on Spotify now.
Inside the baseline…
Nick Kyrgios enjoys to talk, and he has certainly shown that in his time away from the matchcourt with commentary/punditry appearances on both ESPN and BBC. Although Kyrgios is definitely one of the most naturally talented players on the ATP Tour, it may be a bit naive to think that he can just return and start winning. It will certainly be very interesting to see how Kyrgios fares next year, and it seems likely that he will play at least one warm-up tournament prior to his home Grand Slam at the Australian Open.
READ MORE – Nick Kyrgios: I will be playing the Australian Open
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