Nick Kyrgios, 20, became the youngest player to reach the top 20 since Marin Cilic seven years ago. He’s probably the best young player in tennis. But – even more than Andre Agassi, Lleyton Hewitt and Andy Roddick – he’s also the most volatile hothead in the game since Connors and McEnroe.
He smashes rackets so intensely they bounce into the stands, he tanks points, is unkind to umps and bristles at “stupid questions.” He acts “all moody and misunderstood.” He referred to one foe as “dirty scum,” and told Stan Wawrinka that a fellow Aussie had sex with his girlfriend. Allyson Rudd wrote that he “was able to turn the removal of a pair of socks into an angst-ridden one-man show worthy of a fringe theatre specializing in Bertolt Brecht. His behavior screamed, ‘I’m bored.’ It was like peering through the window…at the local kindergarten. There is always one child who doesn’t want to conform, who spies the pots of paint and a teacher’s coat that could do with some livening up.”
En route to the Miami semis, an ump imposed a code violation on Kyrgios. The Aussie promptly claimed that the guy would never have done that to Nadal. Soon, Nick knocked all of tennis, saying, “This game is…biased as s—. It’s ruined. Absolutely ruined.”
BTW: John Isner predicted that 2016 “will be the year of the Kyrgios face-turn. Mark it down. He’s got the game and the personality. It’s up to him to harness it. The cheers will come.” Kyrgios reached the quarters in Madrid this week, defeating reigning French Open champ Wawrinka and nearly taking down Kei Nishikori.
