Nick Kyrgios: how tennis's loudest talent became a hero to the quiet Australians
Of all the immediate outcomes of Australia’s bushfire crisis, perhaps the least predictable, if not the most perverse, was the emergence of new national hero in Nick Kyrgios. No sooner had Kyrgios pledged $200 to the fireys for every ace he hit this summer – sparking a wave of similar offers from sportspeople around the world – than the online razor gang of Kyrgios haters stood at ease.
From Kyrgios’s thought bubble grew a movement. The donations and offers kept coming. Shane Warne parted with his baggy green and raised a million dollars, a magnanimous act with a backstory: Warne, of mum’s diet pills and mirrored ceiling fame, once directed an open letter to Kyrgios that included the words: “You’re testing our patience mate.”
The replies to Kyrgios’s bushfires tweet told a story in themselves. “This could be the turning point for Nick Kyrgios,” responded the sports editor of a newspaper whose tennis column space often benefits from being filled to the gills with blustering opinions on all of Kyrgios’s non-turning points. But it was the reactions of unknown strangers that most caught the eye. “I’m not usually a fan of your actions however credit where it is due,” said one. “This is a bloody brilliant idea.” And so on.
The net result is that Quiet Australians are suddenly loving The Loudest Australian. In another unlikely turn of events, Kyrgios not only parlayed the goodwill into a spirited semi-final run at the ATP Cup in Sydney, but discovered a hitherto repressed patriotism, rising to another level in Australian colours. He threw himself around. He spilled blood. He seemed inhabited by the spirit of Lleyton Hewitt. Cast your mind back to this time last year, and it’s quite a contrast to Kyrgios bickering with the self-same Davis Cup captain before bombing out in the first round at Melbourne Park.
There is an irony there that reflects worst on the critics – those who often say he’s disgracing his country’s good name, when, for most of the tennis calendar, he’s merely lowering his own colours. Here was Kyrgios himself claiming that he only finds top gear when he is representing Australia. Surely even Warnie is on board now?
Which brings us to next week’s season-opening grand slam. Despite the recent revival of Brand Kyrgios, there’s nothing to suggest he’ll end the next fortnight claiming his first major title, further uniting the nation. (That will fall to Ash Barty – no pressure.) Kyrgios has said so himself, claiming that at individual events like this, he doesn’t feel the same level of inspiration. “I don’t know what it is,” he said. “When I’m playing for myself, I find it hard to get up. My motivation levels are pretty low most of the time, but something about these guys and playing for them brings it out of me and I just love it.”
So, the renaissance is already looking more like a blip, and accordingly, the dawn of another Australian Open campaign is greeted by the local press how it always is: as an opportunity to play the role of disapproving parents in Meet The Ockers, with visiting tennis stars drafted in as the crossexamined boyfriends and girlfriends. What is wrong with our Nick, they ask. What’s holding him back?
This week, not for the first time, Roger Federer stepped up with the answers. “Nick doesn’t need to improve a whole lot in his game, he knows he can beat everybody,” the Swiss said. “He’s got the forehand, the backhand, the serve and volleys and all that stuff. With Nick, we know it’s elsewhere – it’s his mind. How much can he do, does he want to do?”
It’s a perfect slice of Federerism, that – friendly, humble, chatty. Start with a compliment. Give the media the quotes they crave. Show concern for you opponent but fill your comments with all the alpha male subtext 20-time grand slam champions are allowed. And to finish, whip the insults into the open court. Voila. Our Nick has “all that stuff”? Sure, but none of Roger’s trophies.
There has always been blame on both sides of the Kyrgios “debate”, such as it is. The Nick knockers veer between sour-faced fogeyism and borderline white supremacy, while the boosters ignore Kyrgios’s worst behaviour and pretend that a basketball jersey is a personality. In the middle somewhere lies an infuriating, funny, petulant, brilliant, inconsistent, even loveable young man, and one less easy to categorise.
And anyway, a lot of the most strident criticism shows nothing more than the passing of time, and the tendency of the old to resent the young. They see Kyrgios as the avatar of a wastrel generation – a walking, trash-talking manifestation of the “OK Boomer” meme. I once told a renowned and articulate former sportswriter that the best Australian sports book not yet written would pierce the surface of Planet Kyrgios. His reply: “Why would anyonewant to read about that fuckwit?”
Of course, we do want to read about him, to talk about him and, most of all, to watch him. One reason for this is the basic scarcity elsewhere of Kyrgios’s qualities. To my mind, Australia currently possesses only three sportspeople whose brilliance is so original and distinct. They are Sam Kerr, Glenn Maxwell and Kyrgios (Steve Smith’s brilliance is now monotonous, his relentless scoring a foregone conclusion). Each has challenged conventions, orthodoxies and mores – Kerr exposing the obviously sexist lie that the Socceroos are the national football team most worth watching, Maxwell that a man who reverse sweeps the first delivery of his innings is not acting at random just to get the Invincibles turning in their graves.
For individual ranking and global esteem, Kyrgios is not in Kerr’s league. Although the ’tweeners are cute, he is not an innovator of Maxwell’s ilk. But unlike the others, Kyrgios’s moments of spontaneous genius are derived of a certain madness and fury, which adds the kind of frisson most sport lacks. When every movement is laced with danger, it produces a certain level of suspense. Kerr and Maxwell’s best moments could be frozen in time, sculpted by artisans and poured in bronze. Kyrgios is the open furnace from which such objects emerge.
Perhaps we’ll never expect Nick Kyrgios to win it all, but it is a victory of a kind that he has finally felt the love, and spent a few weeks as Our Nick. As Steve Kerrigan so sagely put it, I don’t know what the opposite of letting someone down is, but he’s done the opposite.