Kyrgios gets lippy again
Nick Kyrgios has been embroiled in another controversy at Wimbledon, this time with British reporters determined to bait him in the interview room.
An ill-considered question that suggested he had sworn at chair umpire Jake Garner during his fiveset defeat of Dustin Brown led to a terse exchange that will inevitably overshadow the 15th seed’s safe, if still eventful, passage to a third round meeting with 22nd seed Feliciano Lopez.
Kyrgios, in fact, had directed his frustrations at his entourage after dropping serve for 0-2 in the third set, thus earning a code violation for an audible obscenity to match the warning – and fine – he received in his opening match against Radek Stepanek.
The 21-year-old’s main issue with Garner was for calling ‘‘not up’’ for a double-bounce when it appeared Kyrgios had got his racket under a backhand as he pursued a drop volley on the first point of the third set. Brown agreed with Garner at the subsequent change-of-ends that an error had been made.
"That’s just unbelievable, dude. Not that it mattered, because he would have had an easy ball,’’ Kyrgios said to Garner, before confirming his me-againstofficaldom mindset by declaring: ‘‘That’s just horrendous by you guys, once again.’’
So to the press conference. The last significant exchange followed three previous attempts to engage him on the question of his on-court behaviour, and which were reasonably well handled. The fourth was not.
Kyrgios was asked whether, as a friend of Brown’s, he was concerned that other players he did not know as well might be affected by his ‘‘language’’ towards the umpire:
Kyrgios later strode from the main interview room to a smaller studio and spoke of the negativity he had just encountered. SYDNEY MORNING HERALD