Stefanos Tsitsipas and Nick Kyrgios played a really heated match at the Wimbledon Championships this year, and the Australian has now responded to some comments made by Stefanos' mother where she called Kyrgios' tennis ‘dirty tennis.’
There is no love lost between Tsitsipas and Kyrgios. While at times in the past they seemed to get along fine, something in recent times soured their relationship. It was fairly evident in their most recent match at Wimbledon.
The match was very tense, with lots of emotion on both sides. Tsitsipas, in particular, seemed to have struggled with his emotions during the match, losing focus a couple of times and doing some rather uncharacteristic things.
He slammed the ball once, nearly hitting the crowd, which Kyrgios tried to sell to the umpire as default-worthy. The umpire didn’t agree, and the match continued, but Tsitsipas never quite calmed down, which impacted his overall tennis.
In the end, the Australian proved better, winning the match in four sets despite losing the opening set showing that he handled his emotions better overall.
Tsitsipas's mother recently talked about the match to Russian publication Championat, suggesting that Tsitsipas lost because he can’t play dirty tennis like Kyrgios.
"Could have played better, of course. Our [Wimbledon] match turned out to be very nervous with Nick Kyrgios. That is, we were practically offered to play dirty tennis there, but we don’t know how to play such tennis."
As somebody who is very much in tune with what happens on the Tour and on social media, Kyrgios didn’t miss the comments and responded to them in a typical way for himself.
He posted a video from their match on social media where he won a point after the ball touched the tip of the net, and he put the caption ‘dirty tennis.’