Three days ago, 21-year-old Australian tennis player Nick Kyrgios won the biggest title of his young career at the Japan Open in Tokyo. At the time, his fellow Aussie tennis star Lleyton Hewitt promised there was "#MoreToCome" from Kyrgios:
We imagine Kyrgios’ performance at the Shanghai Rolex Masters on Wednesday was not what Hewitt was talking about.
For whatever reason, Kyrgios wasn’t in the mood to put forth any effort during a match against German tennis player Misha Zverev. So…he didn’t put forth any effort. Kyrgios served up shots like this:
He refused to return routine serves:
And he basically handed Zverev the match:
At one point, Kyrgios also asked the umpire—who pleaded with him to be more professional—to end the match as quickly as possible. "Can you call time so I can finish this match and go home?" he said.
Fans at the match were obviously not pleased with what they saw, and one took it upon himself to yell at Kyrgios for what he was doing. Kyrgios inexplicably responded by yelling back at him. "You wanna come here and play?" he asked. "Sit down and shut up and watch."
And after the match, Kyrgios continued to send shots at the fans who came to see him play by telling reporters that he didn’t understand what they were all so upset about. "Not at all," he said. "I feel like if they knew what they were talking about, they’d be on the tennis court and being successful as well. I can’t really understand it at all. They don’t know what I’m going through, so no, I don’t understand it. I don’t owe them anything. It’s my choice. If you don’t like it, I didn’t ask you to come watch. Just leave. If you’re so good at giving advice and so good at tennis, why aren’t you as good as me? Why aren’t you on the tour? 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."
It’s not the first time Kyrgios has tanked a match on purpose. He did essentially the same thing during a match against Richard Gasquet at Wimbledon in 2015.
He did seem to be somewhat remorseful for what happened on Wednesday when he took to Twitter to issue this half-hearted apology:
But what a difference three days can make. Kyrgios went from the highest point of his career to one of the lowest points in no time.
