Culture

The Nick Kyrgios Pile-On Is Predictable And Boring; It’s Time To Give The Guy A Break

Another day and another set of sports headlines dominated by Nick Kyrgios' "meltdown", "bizarre" antics and "bad boy" behaviour.

by Osman Faruqi  13 October 2016

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[Update January 19, 2017] Surprise! People are mad at Nick Kyrgios again.

kyriios

Kyrgios was defeated by Italian Andreas Seppi at the Australian Open last night in a surprising turn after dominating the first and second sets. He copped a number of code violations for swearing repeatedly on-court and at one point throwing his racquet. He’s now facing intense but familiar criticism from the media and tennis fans alike for poor behaviour.

In his post-match interview, Kyrgios said he had faced both physical and mental obstacles in preparing for the competition. He described himself as “pretty banged up”, said “[the] mental side of things are big for me”, and then suggested he needed better management. Kyrgios is one of the few major players without a coach.

As usual, people have many feelings:

It might be a good time to consider the last time this happened. How much energy are we really willing to spend tearing this guy down, and ultimately, what’s it all for?

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Another day and another set of sports headlines dominated by Nick Kyrgios’ “meltdown”, “bizarre” antics and “bad boy” behaviour. The tennis star has become the athlete it’s cool to hate. Which is weird considering Australia is a country that loves sports heroes so much, we regularly turn a blind eye to allegations of sexual assault.

Kyrgios isn’t “controversial” because of illegal, off the court antics. His biggest crime so far has been sledging an opponent during a match. He’s also been accused of “tanking” – deliberately throwing points in order to end a match. It was another episode of tanking last night at the Shanghai Masters that attracted today’s negative headlines.

Kyrgios was extremely defensive of his performance during a post-match press conference. “I don’t owe them anything,” Kyrgios said of fans disappointed with his performance. “It’s my choice. If you don’t like it, I didn’t ask you to come watch. Just leave.

“You want to buy a ticket? Come watch me. You know I’m unpredictable. It’s your choice. I don’t owe you anything. Doesn’t affect how I sleep at night.”

He justified his performance by explaining he was “physically and mentally tired” after playing “a lot of matches in a row”. Kyrgios had been on a six-match winning streak and just last week took out the Japan Open. But yesterday he was accused of “disrespecting” the sport and is facing a potential fine.

Let’s get this straight: After winning a stack of matches, including an international championship, Kyrgios tries to end a match early because he was feeling “physically and mentally” drained and the response from the tennis community and the media is to pile on, call him disrespectful and demand he be fined? What kind of backwards message does that send?

Kyrgios is 21. He might be a star athlete but he’s also a young person, dealing with the pressures of success and expectation on the world stage. He’s not a robot, he’s just another human being who loves Pokémon Go and happens to be really bloody good at tennis.

Can everyone having a go at Kyrgios really claim, with a straight face, that they haven’t “tanked” when it comes to work, study or any other aspect of life? Every bloody Wednesday I feel like clocking off at lunchtime and all I do is sit at a desk and type. It’s totally bizarre to expect our sports-stars, particularly our younger ones, to act like machines and pretend like they don’t go through bouts of self-doubt or mental and physical exhaustion.

And let’s be honest about something else. Kyrgios isn’t playing tennis with the full support of his country. He has been victim to racist attacks from so-called tennis fans, commentators and Australian sports legends.

He regularly faces racist abuse on social media. The boss of Tennis ACT said of the constant, racist attacks, “It’s very hard to watch that sort of stuff go on.”

In July a BBC tennis commentator compared him to a character from The Jungle Book. Last year Australian sporting “legend” Dawn Fraser said that Kyrgios and his brother should “go back to where their fathers or parents came from.” That’s a pretty intense level of racism from an incredibly high profile Australian.

So not only is Kyrgios under pressure to constantly perform at an international level as a young person, he’s doing that while regularly waking up to racist abuse on Twitter and having to listen to venerated Australian icons tell him to “go back to where you from came from”.

Why on earth are people surprised to see him act “arrogantly” in post-match interviews? Despite being an incredibly multicultural country, Australia still hasn’t hasn’t come to terms with its racism. “Arrogance” (we normally call it “confidence” when it applies to white people, by the way) is a tactic people from diverse backgrounds regularly deploy to help deal with the shit that gets thrown our way.

It’s hard to argue Kyrgios has done something no Australian athlete has done before. Sledging?  Yeah, that’s never happened in the history of sport in this country until Kyrgios rocked up. Being exhausted to the point of throwing a match? Yep, I’m sure Kyrgios is the first person to do that as well. Being arrogant? Let me introduce you to our national cricket team.

Overnight Kyrgios issued an apology on Twitter, declaring himself a “work in progress.”

Every 21-year-old is a work in progress. But most young people don’t have their physical and mental development on display to the whole world. Most of them don’t open the newspaper to see famous Australians racially abusing them. Even fewer deal with all that and still rise to the top in the incredibly intense world of international tennis. Kyrgios has done all that, and it’s time to give him a break.

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Feature image via Nick Kyrgios/Facebook