Rafael Nadal will join Andy Murray as a retired player after the Davis Cup Finals next month, but Nick Kyrgios wants to retire differently from those two.
Kyrgios could have already retired after a surgeon told him he might never play again due to the knee and wrist injuries that have sidelined him for over two years, aside from an unsuccessful comeback attempt at the Stuttgart Open in June 2023.
Many tennis fans are excited about Kyrgios' comeback, which he confirmed will take place at the 2025 Australian Open, since the 29-year-old has a unique personality and is capable of exceptional tennis at his best.
However, others are not as interested or impressed by Kyrgios. One former world No. 3 called him overrated, mentioning how he was always injured during a brutal assessment of the 2022 Wimbledon runner-up.
Although Kyrgios will return next year and has no intentions of retiring yet, Andy Murray ended his career in the men's doubles at the Olympics, and what promises to be an emotional farewell for Nadal will occur in Malaga at the Davis Cup Finals.
Neither of those men made the decision to retire quickly. Murray battled for years with a metal hip and performed nowhere near his prime before eventually deciding to quit.
Nadal tried to recover from numerous injury problems for two years, most notably a severe hip problem. After careful consideration, the 38-year-old determined he could not physically compete anymore.
Speaking on the Louis Theroux Podcast, Kyrgios said he did not enjoy watching Murray and Nadal crawl to the finish line and hopes to end his career differently from those two legends.
“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."
Kyrgios felt Murray especially deserved to retire more gracefully after his outstanding career and was unsure whether everything he went through to keep playing was really worth it.
"What Andy Murray's achieved in this sport is second to basically no one ... unless you are Novak (Djokovic), (Roger) Federer, or Nadal, like, the next person is Andy Murray. 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 Australian also opened up about his struggles with mental health and drinking, admitting he would sometimes have between 20 and 30 drinks in one night, including before matches.
"I was just playing and playing and playing and kind of dealing with everything. And it was a dark time. Like I was drinking and I was spiralling out of control, and I was continuing to play and travel."
""20 or 30 drinks (in a night). Easy. I'd drink like a fish. Anything, vodka, anything. "Yeah, but then just wake up and play Nadal the next day. Give him a good run for his money."