MercedesCup: Between genius and madness: Dr. Kyrgios and Mr. Nick am Weissenhof

Nick Kyrgios himself didn’t seem to know what he was doing on the court on Thursday. At least in the end he won – and found something pleasing about this, at least.

By Florian Goosmann from Stuttgart

“Nick, you gotta get up, you gotta go to school!”

“Oh, Mom, five more minutes…”

(Five minutes later)

“Nick, now you really have to go!”

“But I don’t… the teachers are dumb… and the students annoy me… Tell me two reasons why I have to go to school!”

“Nick, you’re 45 and you’re the director!”

***

Nick Kyrgios isn’t 45, he’s not a director either. Nick Kyrgios is a tennis pro. On this Thursday at the Weissenhof in Stuttgart, however, he appeared as if he had also been taken out of bed too early, shortly after 1 pm. Kyrgios, it seems, had a long night behind him. Or was it more of a difficult time…?

His match against Maximilian Marterer began with serves reaching 215, 203 and 209 kph. He started the first frontal tweener at the fourth point of the match. A few rallies later, he swung out Nadal-like forehands over the shoulder and stayed briefly in this position. The change of sides after the 3:2 he spent massaging away the forehead crease between his eyes, which of course did not succeed, because shortly afterwards he trotted grumpily on his side again.

Another service game later he made a serve Henri-Leconte-like in the ascent over, thus even faster than already, shortly after there was a Federer service imitation, without much fuss about it. Every stroke is different: it is both a curse and a blessing for the greatest talents, in a sport in which constant repetition is actually supposed to ensure safety and consistency.

On the other side, she tried to put up Maximilian Marterer, he usually succeeded, only at 4:5 he was briefly unfocused. Kyrgios got sentence one, and he himself did not seem to know how he had done it. Kyrgios, to stay with the school comparison, seemed like a student who had just picked up his math test, with a really completely unexpected one. And now, irritated, he swayed back to his place.

In spite of the one, he didn’t really spray lust in the end.

When he had fended off Marterer’s first break point in set two with almost 200 points on the second serve, he drove a ball into the gang behind him and muttered: “What’s the point?” Everything was “annoying”, boring, he kept babbling, anyway he seemed to have talked himself through the whole match.

At the end of the second round he decided not to choose between first and second serve, which more or less compensated the good torturer. Shortly before the decisive break in set three, the frontal tweener, who of course was beaten without any problems, because a simple, safe forehand pass ball would have done it.

Change of scene, press conference, just ten minutes after the match point. Kyrgios, facial expressions: even less desire for this, drops his bag and shoes in the middle of the way – and when one is already prepared for a press round in the sense of Bernard Tomic (who managed 64 words out of 10 questions in Paris), Kyrgios surprises with detailed and open answers.

“To be honest, I played horribly today. I served okay, that probably kept me in the match. That’s all I could do. My elbow feels good after the two and a half months break, that’s the positive. It’s been two and a half months since I played my last singles game. I wasn’t feeling well, but that was to be expected. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. But yes, today it was rather average.”

Kyrgios now seemed to be in a better mood than on the court, even if you couldn’t see it at all on his face. “The tournament is great. And of course I’m happy to have won my first match. “Winning is better than losing, I’ll take the confidence with me.”

After the great start to the year, everything was “a mess”, then he got hurt. “The last three months have been brutal. I couldn’t even go home because there was no one there to train. I had to go to tournaments without playing. And being away from home without being able to play makes no sense,” says the Canberra man, who is more homeland-loving and homeland-needy than most players.

For his opponent, the frustrated Maxi Torterer, there were only good words. “I played with him in the juniors. He was great in Paris. He’s gonna be very, very good. In the coming years, he will be a serious threat.” And as if that weren’t enough: “He’s going to have a massive career. He’s only 22. He’ll be very good. He’s all right.”

And then Kyrgios, who on that day seemed so aimless, so aimless, so lost, and who is praised by everyone as the greatest talent in tennis, sets a goal. What he wanted to achieve in Wimbledon, where he beat Rafael Nadal in 2014 and discovered the big stage for himself for the first time, in 2018? “I play there because I want to win.” And what does he expect? “To win.”

And perhaps because throughout his entire match in Stuttgart there was speculation about the real reasons for everything, Kyrgios adds: “That’s why I play tennis.