By Russell Jackson/The Guardian
Neither unexpectedly triumphant nor especially shamed on account of his four-set defeat to Britain’s Andy Murray in the first round of the US Open, Nick Kyrgios at least departed Arthur Ashe Stadium with something a little closer to a moral victory than he has managed in recent times.
The hair-trigger reactions to the most minor of injustices remain but were tempered ever so slightly. The most noteworthy on a humid Tuesday night in New York was a tirade early in the first set when fans behind the baseline were allowed to move around mid-game with no regard to the play unfolding. “What the hell are they doing letting people in in the middle of the game?” bristled the young Australian at the changeover. “Such bullshit. Middle of the game. Unreal.” He had a reasonable point, to be honest.
Seemingly rattled by this distraction and facing the kind of spiral that has lost him friends in recent times, Kyrgios eventually regained his composure but having broken Murray’s serve early, surrendered both his own and thus the opening set, 7-5. After losing the second 6-3 things might have deteriorated quickly for the Australian but the fighting instincts so lacking in his infamous Wimbeldon loss to Richard Gasquet finally kicked in and some truly breathtaking ground strokes fuelled a recovery.
Some of the forehand winners whipped past Murray in this brief period of ascendancy seemed to momentarily shrink the court to proportions closer to table tennis. Kyrgios took the third set 6-4 and gave his opponent a genuine fright but he was unable to sustain his counter-attack. The 6-1 blow-out in the fourth set and the code violation for an audible obscenity therein might obscure what was a far more honest account of himself.
Not coincidentally, the elder statesman of Australian tennis, Lleyton Hewitt, sat close by throughout the high-spirited match, shooting the odd glare (tension or reproach? It was hard to tell) in the direction of Australia’s wunderkind, the man-child he’s taken to mentoring. Hewitt has barely got any tread left on the tyres himself as he heads into a second round clash with another maligned compatriot, Bernard Tomic, though the hours of his own preparation time he was surrendering to such an insurmountable task as Kyrgios’s perhaps said something about both men.
Grinding his way through the final stages of a playing career that brought two grand slam titles and the world No1 ranking, you wonder whether a new and impactful chapter now awaits Hewitt in his stewardship of Kyrgios. Hewitt’s already at home in the commentary box and an astute analyst at that, but perhaps those famous competitive instincts will find a more rewarding challenge in taking his modern-day equivalent to the heights he once touched himself. The layers of mutual benefit in such a combination are many and varied.
Still, Hewitt certainly wouldn’t have liked what he saw when Kyrgios launched a highly speculative half-volley “tweener” through his legs during the second set, when Murray was still hemmed in and scrambling to hold serve. In the end it was the panning of cameras across to the attentive and animated face of Hewitt.
In those expressions you saw microseconds of the scowling outbursts that have now faded into history. Kyrgios might not have fully grown into his personality yet, nor his spindly frame, but what a sight he might be if he is swept up in Hewitt’s slipstream. At the least, results like this one would carry with them an entirely different feeling of disappointment, one borne of genuine expectation.
Nick Kyrgios
