It’s hard to criticize Nick Kyrgios these days and not come across as a scolding parent.
My 18-year-old daughter, also a tennis player who has trained on courts next to him, reminds me, while looking in my direction, that “he’s a complicated guy who’s often misunderstood.”
No doubt underneath the ornery shell lies an intelligent and sensitive soul capable of winning me over. [1]I’ve seen it in person on a few occasions, away from the cameras. The man has a soft and giving side, especially with younger players. Yet this sensitivity to younger players makes his … Continue reading
Yet he hasn’t yet. I think it’s worth examining why.
Building a legacy?
As someone who opted out of this year’s Wimbledon, I can tell you that Nick Kyrgios still managed to worm his way into my consciousness.
His tantrum during the third-round Stefanos Tsitsipas match, in which he repeatedly called the chair umpire “bruh,” verbally assaulted him and then campaigned for his opponent to be defaulted, was the greatest combination of churlishness and cowardice this side of Floyd Mayweather.[2]Lest anyone forget: Mayweather retired with a pro record of 50-0, achieved in part by repeatedly refusing to fight the other greatest fighter of his era, Manny Pacquiao, while the latter was in his … Continue reading
This was preceded by a first-round match in which he spat toward a fan and verbally insulted on-court officials, then rudely ate his way through a press conference. All of this occurred under the cloud of a DV allegation (a hearing is set for Aug. 2.), not to mention an ever-expanding archive—a large part of his legacy so far—of maladaptive antics.
Our hypocrisy?
While I wouldn’t wish for Kyrgios to be held hostage to his past, it’s worth asking of the latest events: Who benefits from all of this?
Perhaps those members of a Twitter-fueled public who are tantalized by shock and rubber-necking spectacle. Perhaps Kyrgios himself and his unkind impulses (he seemed to take a kind of pleasure in inciting the regressive suffering of Tsitsipas) or his simple desire for attention. Perhaps also a sportswriter like Jon Wertheim who likes to remind us of Kyrgios’s upside.
But Nick Kyrgios is not simply a racket-wielding magician. He’s also a boor who’s made on-court verbal abuse commonplace. His aggression and hostility are, in a word, toxic.
That he defiantly defends against those who question his antics by acting incredulous or lashing out at them is a concern. (It suggests we focus on his goodness and largely ignore the rest.) But also of concern is a self-serving tennis-viewing public that seems, at least so far, largely unwilling to address his antics as anything more than humorous and entertaining.
Sometimes I wonder whether we’re watching the same spectacle.
If Serena Williams, who’s had her own famous meltdowns, set out to behave this way each week, or if our kids did, I doubt we’d be identifying their actions as “entertaining” and “good for the sport.” This hypocrisy vis-á-vis Kyrgios is a befuddling lapse in collective judgment.
And this begs the question: What will the next Kyrgios meltdown yield?
So for all his shotmaking prowess, Kyrgios comes at a cost. The question for tennis is how long it will still cover that cost.
Notes, etc.
| ↑1 | I’ve seen it in person on a few occasions, away from the cameras. The man has a soft and giving side, especially with younger players. Yet this sensitivity to younger players makes his controversial on-court antics, which young people will no doubt witness, harder to justify. |
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| ↑2 | Lest anyone forget: Mayweather retired with a pro record of 50-0, achieved in part by repeatedly refusing to fight the other greatest fighter of his era, Manny Pacquiao, while the latter was in his prime. |