Nick Kyrgios withdraws from the Australian Open: ‘It’s pretty brutal’
Nick Kyrgios is out of the Australian Open after he confirmed he will undergo surgery on a knee injury.
Kyrgios explained he had started feeling the problem over the last couple of weeks, and he had used a recent exhibition against Novak Djokovic to test the knee.
However, the results of that test were clearly not very good, and he will now sit out his home Grand Slam.
“It’s just bad timing,” Kyrgios said. “That’s life, you know. injuries are part of sport. I’m not doubting that I’ll be back to my full strength.
“Devastated obviously. It’s my home tournament and going into this event as one of the favourites, it’s pretty brutal. [This is] one of the most important tournaments of my career. It hasn’t been easy at all.”
Nick Kyrgios was the 19th seed in the tournament and felt he had a genuine chance of winning it following his run to the final of Wimbledon last year.
He confirmed the injury was a small tear in his lateral meniscus which will require arthroscopic surgery to correct.
The good news is that is a minor operation, so it should not keep him on the sidelines for very long. It is likely that Kyrgios will attempt to be back on court in time for Indian Wells, which starts in March.
“We have made the sensible decision to withdraw him,” physio Will Maher said
“At this stage he wants to be mentally comfortable that he can go seven matches and go the distance. Getting on the court simply wasn’t enough for him.
“The situation now we want to prevent him from having further injury or making that injury worse. So now he’ll go back to Canberra at the end of the week.”
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