Kyrgios fined £13,000 for crude water-bottle gesture
Nick Kyrgios has been fined €15,000 (£13,000) by the Association of Tennis Professionals after making suggestive gestures with a water bottle during Saturday’s semi-final defeat at the hands of Marin Cilic at Queen’s Club.
This was the latest bizarre moment in a career that has been full of them.
The BBC cameras happened to be focusing on Kyrgios as he sat on his chair at a change of ends and they picked up his inexplicable bit of play-acting.
It must have been difficult to work out what wording to place by the fine.
Water-bottle abuse is not mentioned in the ATP rule book, so tournament supervisor Lars Graff settled for the catch-all title of “inappropriate behaviour”.
Fortunately this hiccup did not coincide with one of Kyrgios’s periods under close observation, like the six-month suspended sentence he received in 2015 after making disobliging comments about Stan Wawrinka’s girlfriend, or the “plan of care under the direction of a sports psychologist” that he was required to undergo after tanking (tennis jargon for giving up easily) a match in Shanghai the following year.
Kyrgios’s supporters often make the point that we cannot moan about the lack of characters in the game on one hand, and complain about his eccentricities on the other.
Certainly this latest incident has echoes of another tempestuous champion, Jimmy Connors, who used to treat his racket handle in the same crude manner Kyrgios did his water bottle. These sorts of oddballs make tennis a more interesting sport, even if they are always bound to divide opinion.