Nick Kyrgios is a sensational tennis player but he's not everyone's cup of tea due to his authentic personality that deviates from the prototypical tennis player.
If you handed the ATP a tennis factory with the goal of creating the perfect player as they see it they wouldn't create Nick Kyrgios. They would probably create the polar opposite in everything but his playstyle and showmanship.
Even so, Kyrgios exists and with him come the good and bad. He's a superb tennis player when he takes the sport seriously which has been lately. The first part of his career rarely saw him 100 % invested in the sport which was a shame to many.
John McEnroe famously talks often about how much he 'begged' him to take it seriously and his compatriot Pat Cash understands that well. He too thought that Kyrgios would be a sensational tennis player worthy of a grand slam if he only took it seriously.
I’ve said this quite a number of years ago, I said if Nick can just improve his mental capacity to be able to focus in matches just 5% every year or 3% every year then he’ll be a contender for Grand Slams. And that’s exactly what he’s done. He’s done really well in that respect.
Now the bad really sticks out. He is loud, he is a bit questionable in the way he approaches certain things and he yells at his box. Often. The last bit is very familiar to Cash as he did it as well, though not as often as Kyrgios.
He realises that he’s never going to be perfect and he’s going to explode and lose his temper. I'm certainly someone who did that but not to the disrespect. Of course I yelled at my coach in frustration at some stage but if you ask Marcus how many times I did that, he’d be able to count on the same hand. But there wouldn’t be a set without him (Nick Kyrgios) doing it a handful of times. I did it a handful of times in my whole career.
Despite that, he gets tolerated a lot of things on the court and that's by design. According to Cash, Nicholas Hilmy Kyrgios plays the victim role very well which allows him to get away with certain things. It's been seen in history before with the likes of McEnroe. They both got away more than other players avoiding code violations and getting them only when it's long overdue.
I think John certainly pushed the envelope more than probably he should have, more than should have been allowed. I have no doubt about it. He got away with a lot. And Nick as well, he plays the victim very well like ‘everybody is after me and nobody likes me.’ It’s not true at all. It’s just all in his head.
0 Comments