The Kyrgios Conundrum
An investigation into tennis’ obsession with Nick Kyrgios, and why it’s time the sport moves on from him.
“A Karen Khachanov–Casper Rudd semifinal just doesn’t move the needle,” tweeted sports reporter Jake Marsh shortly after Australian tennis player Nicholas Kyrgios’ loss to Karen Khachanov in the quarterfinals of the 2022 US Open, “We needed more of this man.” Linked below was a video of Kyrgios smashing and throwing two of his rackets after shaking hands with the umpire. No actual tennis, just the destruction of his rackets.
There are two things about this tweet that really irk me. Firstly, is that this man calls himself a sports reporter and can’t even spell Casper Ruud’s surname correctly! Secondly, is that Marsh, and many people both in and out of sports media, believe what tennis needs to sell itself to a wider audience is not actually promoting tennis, but instead promoting the antics of controversial characters within the sport like Kyrgios.
Changing of the Guard
The era of the Big Three, the titans of the sport for the last twenty odd years, is starting to come to a close. 41-year-old Roger Federer, whose career spanned 24 years, will retire after this year’s Laver Cup, after more than a year’s hiatus due to a knee injury and multiple surgeries. Rafael Nadal, despite winning two of the four slams in 2022, is no spring chicken anymore, and has dealt with various injuries throughout the year. Novak Djokovic, who still won this year’s Wimbledon, has been playing less and less matches due to being unable to enter many tournaments because of his refusal to get vaccinated. Nadal and Djokovic are both in their mid-thirties and will likely retire in the coming years.
A new era of tennis is upon us, and as a consequence, tennis media is scrambling to find ways to promote a new generation of tennis players to a new generation of people, namely my generation, Generation Z. The main solution so far seems to be the ATP and WTA tours signing a deal with Netflix to produce a documentary series following certain players within both tours for the 2022 tennis season. This is likely piggybacking off the massive success of “Formula 1: Drive to Survive”, a docuseries produced by Formula 1 and Netflix. The first season aired in 2019, covering the storylines and drivers of the 2018 World Championship, and since then, has introduced many young fans to the sport, in particular, young female fans like myself. Tennis executives are probably hoping that this new tennis documentary series will have the same impact that “Drive to Survive” had: creating an explosion in popularity for tennis and introducing a new generation of fans to the sport.
The 2022 season isn’t over yet, however, so tennis must make do by trying to push its new, young talent as much as possible through other means. 21-year-old Iga Świątek and 19-year-old Carlos Alcaraz winning this year’s US Open and becoming the number one players of their respective tours is a good start. However, it will be a while before they achieve the same kind of household name and status as the Big Three or Serena Williams, who retired at the same US Open. There is an undercurrent of desperation in the way tennis’ new generation is advertised, as if the tennis world is trying to use them to plug a Big Three and Williams-shaped hole.
This is aptly demonstrated by comparisons between Alcaraz and Nadal and Świątek and Williams running absolutely rampant on social media. “The next Rafael Nadal!” “Longest winning streak since Williams in 2013!” Tennis media is adamant about milking these comparisons for all their worth instead of allowing these young and incredibly talented athletes to simply exist as their own entities. It’s one of my biggest pet peeves, although understandable. The Big Three and Williams have been the faces of the sport for as long as I can remember, once-in-a-generation talents, the GOATs of tennis. Tennis advertising has always been centred around them, naturally, and is now navigating uncharted waters regarding how to advertise the sport in a Big Three-less world.
The era of absolute dominance by the Big Three is gone. Whilst Alcaraz will certainly go on to win multiple slams, the men’s draw is starting to open up, and we can expect more variety in winners. Nadal and Djokovic will stubbornly try to hoard as many more slams as they can, so long as their bodies – or in Djokovic’s case, the border regulations of certain countries – allow them, but all good things must come to an end. There is more opportunity for younger players to take the most coveted tennis trophies for themselves. Following Frances Tiafoe’s brilliant upset over Rafael Nadal in the fourth round, the average age of the men’s quarter finalists at this year’s US Open was 23.75. The average age of the semi finalists was 23. The finalists? The ages of Alcaraz and 23-year-old Ruud average to a sprightly 21.
“Ericka, for an article that has Kyrgios in the title, you’re sure spending a lot of time not talking about him!” Tut-tut, dear Reader, have some patience! I am merely setting up the necessary exposition. The point I’m trying to make, albeit long-windedly, is that there is a fresh crop of young talent, ripe for the picking, and any one of them could be tennis’ new media darling. If that is the case, why is there such a fixation on one player in particular?
L’enfant Terrible
Nicholas Hilmy Kyrgios, the bad boy of tennis, the tortured genius. Currently 27-years-old, he is the eldest out of the aforementioned US open quarter finalists. He first exploded onto the tennis scene at the tender age of 19, defeating World No. 1 Rafael Nadal in four sets in the fourth round of the 2014 Wimbledon Championships. In that match, Kyrgios hit a between-the-legs forehand volley winner that was touted as “shot of the year” in the video title of the moment uploaded to the Wimbledon YouTube channel. Despite losing to Milos Raonic in the quarterfinals, this Wimbledon breakthrough helped Kyrgios break into the Top 100 of the ATP World Rankings and attain a career-high ranking of 66.
The tennis world saw this big-serving, hyper-aggressive, precocious young talent with a flair for the dramatics (see the aforementioned tweener), and thought “Could this be what heralds the beginning of a new generation of tennis?” “Will we finally see someone rise up to the monolithic hegemony that is the Big Three?” “A future World No. 1”, some called him.
Such is not the case. Kyrgios’ career can be characterised by its many ups and downs due to a plethora of reasons: burnout, poor match fitness, tanking, lack of worth ethic, and simply not loving tennis – he has stated that he has a greater interest in basketball. It’s a polarising career, one rife with controversy. Many times he has been accused of and even penalised for tanking, unsportsmanlike conduct (racket smashes, the Kyrgios signature!), and verbally abusing both spectators and chair umpires alike. Following an early exit at the 2017 US Open to the then World No. 235 John Millman, Kyrgios openly admitted that he’s “not dedicated to the sport at all”. He said that “there are players out there that are more dedicated, that want to get better, that strive to get better every day, the one-percenters. I'm not that guy."
At the 2016 Shanghai Rolex Masters, he threw his match against Mischa Zverev 6-3 6-1 in 48 minutes. During the match, he tapped his serve over the net several times, walked to his chair while Zverev’s serve was coming towards him, and yelled at a spectator asking him to “respect the game”. For that match alone, he accrued up to $41,500 in fines from the ATP: $16,500 during the match ($10,000 for a “lack of best efforts”, $5,000 for the verbal abuse of a spectator, and $1,500 for unsportsmanlike conduct) and $25,000 after the match along with an eight week suspension and encouragement to see a sports psychologist. This was only days after winning his biggest title at the time in Tokyo.
He’s been called many things: talented but mercurial, hot-tempered, volatile but unwilling to sacrifice his authenticity and individuality, a walking contradiction, capable of brilliant things but unwilling to put in the effort to achieve them. Winning an ATP 500 title in Tokyo followed by the Shanghai Open incident is probably one of the best examples of the “contradictions” that have plagued his entire professional career. In 2015, he was given a suspended 28-day ban and fined $10,000 after telling opponent Stan Wawrinka “Kokkinakis banged your girlfriend. Sorry to tell you that mate,” during their match at the Roger’s Cup in Montreal. That same year, he was accused of tanking in his match against Richard Gasquet at the Wimbledon Championships. The following Wimbledon, he was fined for swearing. Shocking, I know.
More recently, Kyrgios lost 7-6(3) 6-3 to Jannik Sinner in the fourth round of the 2022 Miami Open. Frustrations with the playing speed of the court surface, which he deemed too slow, and then the volume of chair umpire Carlos Bernades’ walkie talkie. When he fell behind in the tiebreak, he smashed a racket, got in a verbal altercation with Bernades during the change of ends, was docked a point for unsportsmanlike conduct, argued with Bernades some more, double faulted to hand the first set to Sinner, smashed another racket, and was then handed a second set game penalty.
Clearly rattled and frustrated by the turn of events, Kyrgios lost the second set rather handily to Sinner, helped along by the game penalty. After shaking hands with his opponent at the net, instead of shaking hands with the umpire as is customary, Kyrgios refused to shake Bernades’ hand and called him a “fucking retard” (you can hear him say it in the match highlight video uploaded by Tennis TV, listen closely at the timestamp 3:30).
If I’m being honest, it’s getting rather tiring. There have been so many of these incidents over the years that his Wikipedia page literally has a section named “Controversial incidents” that lists not even all of these incidents. It’s very rinse and repeat. Kyrgios does something controversial on court, he gets fined for it, the moment gets milked on social media, and then we move onto the next incident. Rinse and repeat.
Anti-Establishment “Icon”
Despite his less than stellar on-court conduct, Kyrgios is probably one of the most popular male tennis players in the world, bar the Big Three and Andy Murray. At the time of writing this, he has 3.2 million followers on Instagram. The current World No. 1 Alcaraz has 2 million followers, most of which he gained following his US Open win. The previous World No. 1 Daniil Medvedev only has 1 million followers.
For a long time, I’ve wondered what exactly makes Kyrgios so appealing to so many people. I certainly wouldn’t consider myself a stick-in-the-mud, anyone who knows me can tell you that I swear in every other sentence. I do think that some of tennis’ rules can be rather stuffy and ridiculous, and that its branding as the “gentleman’s sport” does no favours to help its attempts to modernise. I also think being fined $4,000 for swearing is a bit much, although that is barely a dent in a top player’s wallet in the grand scheme of things.
Tennis is a sport steeped in tradition. Players get fined for swearing, for smashing rackets, for taking too long in the toilet. If a player is spotted wearing non-white underwear at Wimbledon, the umpire will stop play and the player will be given white underwear to change into. They can even choose what size they want! This stuffiness has made a lot of older fans disillusioned with the sport, and turned off many potential younger fans from the sport.
This is exactly what makes Kyrgios so appealing to many viewers, both casual and tennis fanatics. That complete disregard and lack of respect for tradition. The trash talking, the bravado, the “don’t care” attitude he has toward tennis. My friend Joseph wrote a great Twitter thread about it: he is seen as some alternative “anti-establishment” player, “a populist figure bringing what the “people” want to tennis”.
...seeing him in person and being surrounded by people cheering him made me realize that, at least here, the actual audience for him is a lot of older and middle aged men. In other words, exactly who you’d expect to see at a tennis event, not some kind of new wave. But rather than the same old-guard, these are people who seem to have become disenchanted with the sport and see NK as making tennis great again. They’re quick to tell you that he’s just like McEnroe and Connors and that these are the only really enjoyable types of tennis players. I think this sort of NK fandom is something like the tennis equivalent of a mid-life crisis: Instead of buying a Mazda Miata, these people show up at tennis matches to cheer for NK, and to tell anyone who’ll listen that he’s the only exciting part of this boring, stodgy game. His brand of populism is more than a little bit akin to Trump’s, what with the constant flow of imagined personal grievances, his obsession with claiming he’s not appreciated by the establishment (the media and Aussie legends), and a nearly pathological lack of concern for others.
What Joseph is saying here is that while Kyrgios does bring in a lot of younger “dude-bro” fans that would rather watch basketball but “otherwise wouldn’t be caught dead at a tennis match”, he also attracts older tennis fans who have become disillusioned with the sport, who find it boring to watch now, who miss the days of the antics and tantrums of McEnroe and Connors. Kyrgios brings the excitement and flavour to tennis that they feel has been absent from the game for too long.
However, there are so many other players who are entertaining to watch, if entertaining tennis is what people want: Frances Tiafoe, for example. No Tiafoe match is a boring one, and he is able to interact with and pump up the crowd in a way that is still respectful to his opponent and the game. You can tell he truly loves tennis when he plays. Alternatively, if what a viewer wants is the irreverence that Kyrgios has for tennis, they can watch Alexander Bublik, who has publicly said that he hates tennis and only plays for the money. Bublik also employs the same kind of unpredictable game style and has a penchant for tweener and underarm serves, so much so that he has garnered many comparisons to Kyrgios. He is essentially Kyrgios without the tantrums, without the racket smashes. So why keep watching Kyrgios? What is it that he has that Tiafoe and Bublik do not?
Perhaps it’s because neither Tiafoe nor Bublik had the same kind of breakout win Kyrgios had, or at least for Tiafoe, not before defeating Nadal this US Open. They have not experienced the same kind of meteoric rise that Kyrgios had. Tiafoe only has 409,000 Instagram followers, and Bublik, who seems to abhor Instagram so much that he didn’t make a proper post about the birth of his son, has a measly 148,000. There is so much potential for them to become more popular figures in the sport, however, so why doesn’t the ATP promote them in the same way they promote Kyrgios?
A Car Crash in Slow Motion
There is one thing I cannot deny, and it’s that drama sells. People love watching compilations of tennis players losing their cool and smashing rackets. These kinds of videos can rack up millions of views on Youtube, and it’s something the ATP is also aware of. Tennis TV also makes these kinds of videos: “The Most Epic Tennis Racket Smashes!” “Top 10 ATP Tennis Meltdowns & Angry Moments!” Guess which player they put in the thumbnail of both videos. That’s right, Kyrgios. The ATP has embraced this “bad boy” persona and is milking it for all its worth.
Kyrgios sells. His meltdowns sell. His racket smashes sell. He is adored for this behaviour. He is called “real” and “what tennis needs”. He is a breath of fresh air, breathing new life into this stuffy and stodgy sport. A large part of what makes Kyrgios so appealing to watch is not even his tennis, but simply tuning in because you’re curious about whether or not he’ll have another meltdown, smash another racket, yell at the umpire again. Like watching a car crash in slow motion, it may be horrible but you just can’t look away.
I have nothing against players smashing rackets. It’s a perfectly fine way to release negative tension or anger and refocus on a match. As a Rublev fan, I know what the alternative is and it’s not pretty. I believe in general, the entire ATP tour needs to treat umpires, linesmen, and ball kids with more respect. As a Medvedev fan, it would be hypocritical of me to not acknowledge the “small cat” incident at this year’s Australian Open. Was it rather amusing? Yes, I cannot deny that. Was it acceptable to yell at the umpire though? No, not at all. Tennis officials deserve to be treated with more respect as a whole.
There is a fine line to be walked regarding what behaviour should be enabled because it’s entertaining and when it needs to be shut down. Medvedev’s meltdown was probably the most viral moment of the 2022 Australian Open. The video of the incident posted by World Wide of Sports has 2.5 million views. Like I said, drama sells. My friend May explained this entertainment factor that Medvedev has in her own article, and how his own “drama” was essentially her gateway into the sport:
I remember the exact moment the switch flipped for me, in regard to my love for Daniil. I had just discovered that there was a community of tennis fans on twitter, people who thought about the sport in the more casual way I did. An account called @drivevolleys had posted a video called “Daniil Medvedev once said.” It was maybe a minute and thirty seconds in length, but the entirety of the video was basically Daniil in some form of verbal confrontation with someone—an umpire, a fellow player, the crowd, a tennis journalist. One clip featured him revelling in boos at the 2019 US Open, another scolding fellow competitor Stefanos Tsitsipas for hitting a let without apologising.
As a staunch fan of the Real Housewives franchise, this really appealed to me. I am subject to that vice so often attributed to women my age—I love the goss. And Daniil in particular, I learned, delivered. Daniil’s dry and sarcastic wit never fails to entertain me, each zinger hitting like one of his 225 km/h serves. I think it’s evident that I don’t condone all of his on court actions, but I do credit his interaction with the crowd at the 2019 US Open as what truly made me a fan. The careful gloss of high celebrity is easy to seek out: so often even in our private digital spaces we use the words of PR training in order to interact with each other. Daniil provides an alternative to this. Of course Medvedev is subject to these same rules, but he approaches his relationship with journalists and the crowd in a much less polished way, and I find this immensely appealing.
So then, what is the difference between a Medvedev and a Kyrgios? Why do I enjoy Medvedev’s behaviour, but continue to abhor Kyrgios’? Perhaps it’s because Medvedev generally keeps his cool most of the time and his meltdowns aren’t every match. Perhaps it’s because I know he is truly passionate about tennis; his rise to the top was not an easy one. Perhaps it’s because from what we see of his personality in press conferences and interviews, he is a genuinely kind and calm man with a strange sense of humour.
“Ericka,” you may ask, “Aren't Kyrgios’ on and off-court demeanours also very different? Isn’t he friends with a lot of players on tour? Why do you still dislike him so much? You’re being rather biased here.”
Maybe I am being biased, but allow me to explain. What I don’t like about Kyrgios is that he is able to keep getting away with abusing umpires and spectators. I don’t like that he starts throwing tantrums at the first sign of adversity and tanks matches and ruins people’s viewing experiences simply because he can’t be bothered to play. I hate that he constantly needs to insult and belittle other players. I hate that he doesn’t act with the maturity that a man who is almost 30-years-old should have.
Yes, Kyrgios is friendly with a lot of players, but he also has ridiculous and petty beef with a lot of them in what seems like staged attempts to remain relevant, such as the aforementioned Casper Ruud clay court beef. Medvedev doesn’t feel the need to punch down on players the same way Kyrgios does. Even when talking about his fraught relationship with rival Stefanos Tsitsipas, he has never disrespected the other player. In the small cat incident, which was during their semifinal at the Australian Open, Medvedev’s issue was not with Tsitsipas himself, but rather with Tsitsipas’ father, Apostolos, who was coaching him from the sidelines.
I believe this is why the ATP continues to promote Kyrgios over Tiafoe and Bublik. Perhaps to them, the latter two don’t have that same it-factor Kyrgios has when it comes to the drama. No matter how hard I wrack my brain, I cannot recall the last time Tiafoe or Bublik smashed a racket or yelled at an umpire. Meanwhile, I can come up with an entire laundry list of Kyrgios’ atrocious on-court behaviour over the years. Tiafoe only tends to speak out about important social issues, and Bublik…well, he doesn’t tend to speak about much at all; they don’t spend their free time getting into random Twitter beef with their fellow tennis players and colleagues. In other words, to the ATP, they’re too boring.
Beyond marketability or a lack thereof, there is another reason why I take so much issue to how much the ATP promotes Kyrgios, and it’s a lot more serious than on-court tantrums and Twitter beef with other tennis players.
He’s A Domestic Abuser, Susan
Kyrgios has been having somewhat of a career revival this year. He won the Australian Open doubles with good friend and fellow Australian Thanasi Kokkinakis (yes, “Kokkinakis banged your girlfriend” Kokkinakis. Was that actually true? We’ll never know, not that it’s any of our business.), reached the Wimbledon finals, and won both the singles and doubles at the Washington Open. He has been consistently making the quarter and semifinals of various tournaments.
A word of warning: if domestic abuse and suicide are topics that are potentially triggering for you, please skip to the next section of the article.
A lesser known fact is that Kyrgios has a court case in October for allegedly assaulting his ex-girlfriend Chiara Passari. While the charge is for common assault, those on tennis twitter like myself know that it is very likely he has been domestically abusing her, if not physically, but certainly mentally. In a series of Instagram stories posted in October 2021, during and after they were separated by police after arguing in the hotel room they were quarantining in, Passari revealed many things about Kyrgios: that he has been unfaithful to her, that he has told her to kill herself on multiple occasions, and that he has been emotionally and physically abusive to her. In other words, domestic abuse.
When asked by a fan if Kyrgios is similar to German tennis player Alexander Zverev, Passari wrote in her stories “I’m not believing or not believing any of speculations against Zverev but all I’m saying is if those speculations and reports were true about him then his behaviour is very similar to Nick’s. That’s what they have in common.”
The “speculations” that Passari is referring to are the accusations of domestic abuse by Zverev to his ex-girlfriend Olga Sharypova, published in two articles by tennis journalist Ben Rothenberg, the first one to Racquet Magazine in October 2020, and the second to Slate Magazine in August 2021. In a series of interviews with Rothenberg, Sharypova detailed the multiple instances that Zverev was physically and emotionally abusive to her, including an incident where he struck her and she attempted suicide by injecting herself with insulin that Zverev carries around because of his type 1 diabetes. In August 2021, a German court issued an injunction against Slate and Rothenberg, forcing Slate to temporarily remove the article from their site, which is why I had to link an archived version of the article. More than a year later, the article still hasn’t been re-published.Some people would argue“innocent until proven guilty. I myself have gotten into many twitter debates with people who use this line of logic. Perhaps in the eyes of the law, Zverev and Kyrgios are innocent. However, as a woman I understand how hard it is for women to report domestic abuse, and how easy it is for men to get away with domestic abuse. God forbid I choose to believe victims and support women! In October 2021, an entire year after the first article about Sharypova was published, the ATP announced an investigation into the abuse allegations. Sharypova told Rothenberg in March 2022 that she was finally contacted by the ATP for the investigation, five months after it was first announced, and 17 months after making her initial accusations. As of writing this article, the investigation is still ongoing.
Considering how long this investigation is taking, it may not come as a surprise that the ATP still does not have a domestic abuse policy in place. There are currently four players on the tour who have been charged with or have domestic abuse allegations: Zverev, Kyrgios, Nikoloz Basilashvili, and Thiago Seyboth-Wild. One could argue that Zverev’s case cannot be tried in any court of law due to the incidents of abuse happening in multiple countries. Hence, why Sharypova has not filed a court case – she herself is aware of this. That is not the case for the latter three players, however. The incidents of abuse all happened in their countries of birth, Australia, Georgia, and Brazil, and have all been tried or will be tried in local courts. If that is the case, then why haven’t Kyrgios, Basilashvili, or Seyboth-Wild not been punished by the ATP at all? There have been no fines, no suspension from the tour, nothing.
As a female tennis fan, it is devastating that the governing body of my favourite sport refuses to do anything about domestic abuse. There is a very much untapped demographic of young female fans who could very much become future fans of a sport whose demographic is shrinking, but if men who have literally abused women are the poster boys of the sport, why should said young women have any inclination to watch? Tennis remains a male-dominated sport with a very patriarchal marketing structure. May, in another article about this exact issue, voices my thoughts exactly:
Why should I put in the effort to pay for a tennis channel subscription or merchandise or tickets to tournaments when I know the very tour I am paying is willing to stand by while women are actively being abused on their tournament sites?
What is even more disappointing is the continued endorsement of Kyrgios by his fellow players, including young female players. Kyrgios was the first client signed to four-time slam champion and good friend Naomi Osaka’s new agency Evolve. Roland Garros finalist Coco Gauff has defended Kyrgios, citing his kindness off-court:
...when I was 13 at Miami Open again, he finished a two-hour practice. I think with Frances Tiafoe. I remember saying, There's no way he's going to want to hit with me. Just grind it out for two hours. He actually stayed and hit with me for an hour again. It's just moments like that that people don't really see about him. So I think people paint him as a bad guy. I feel around the grounds, at least my experience of him, he's not.
2021 US Open Champion Emma Raducanu, who drew criticism for tweeting “NK” with a magic wand emoji during Wimbledon, around the time he was initially charged with assault, continued to endorse him in an interview with the Evening Standard:
To me, he’s always been very kind and generous. He was supporting me after Wimbledon last year, before the US Open, so the way he’s been with me, yeah, he’s been really nice. People definitely want to watch Nick.
I can admit that Kyrgios has done some good things in his life. In January 2020, to support the Australian bushfire relief efforts, he pledged to donate $200 for every ace he hit that summer, and worked with Tennis Australia to hold a charity exhibition match called Rally For Relief, which included top players like Williams, Tsitsipas, Osaka, and the entire Big Three. Aces for Bushfire Relief ended up raising $5 million by the end of the exhibition. Earlier this year, he opened up about his struggles with depression, self harm, and suicidal ideation. Kyrgios is no cartoon villain. He is a human being, an inherently flawed and multi-faceted creature like the rest of us. However, it does not absolve him of all sin. I can sympathise with his mental health issues while holding him accountable for his horrid behaviour and domestic abuse, just like I can acknowledge that Zverev’s new charity to help children with diabetes is a great initiative, but also hold him accountable for the abuse of Sharypova.
I am fully aware that Kyrgios won’t be going away anytime soon. The ATP will continue to promote him. Sponsors will continue to endorse him. Other players will continue being friends with him. Thinking about it fills me with a deep, deep despair, but I know I, with my measly little fan account, cannot do anything concrete that would change that. What I can do, however, is suggest some other players the ATP can promote. Will this do anything? Probably not. I can sure as hell try, though.
The Kids Are Alright
Since 2017, the ATP has held the Next Gen ATP Finals, where top seven players on the tour aged 21-and-under and one wild card play for the title of Next Gen Champion. It is essentially the Nitto ATP Finals for young, up-and-coming players, with the qualification process of the “race to the final”, where players have to earn a certain number of points to qualify.
The winners of the Next Gen finals are now some of the top players in the world. The 2018 winner Stefanos Tsitsipas is currently ranked 6th in the world, has won nine ATP singles titles, including two Master 1000 championships, and was a finalist at the 2021 French Open. Jannik Sinner won the 2019 edition after being awarded the wild card, catapulting him to tennis stardom. He is now ranked 11th in the world and has six ATP singles titles. The 2021 winner, Carlos Alcaraz, is the new World No. 1.
It is the latter two players who I really want to focus on. Sinner and Alcaraz have already played against each other three times this year, Sinner winning the first two matches. Their third match was at this year’s US Open quarterfinals, in which Alcaraz was the victor, Sinner becoming another victim in his march to the title and the World No. 1 position. It was a five-set, five hour and fifteen minutes epic that could be considered the best match of the tournament. It was the kind of match where any of the points played could have made the highlight reel of a lesser match (I’m not kidding, the extended highlights video is over 45 minutes long). It was an awe-inspiring display of two of tennis’ brightest young stars, and the start of a new rivalry to last the ages. The shorter, initial highlights video has 1.5 million views, something rather unprecedented for a mere quarterfinal match devoid of any of the Big Three, Murray, or Kyrgios.
This is the future of tennis. These are the young stars of the sport that will go on to achieve much greater things than Kyrgios likely will in the rest of his career, however long that is. It is the Alcarazes and the Sinners of the tennis world who should be the new faces of this sport. Fresh-faced, earnest players with a true love and respect for the game, who will go on to win multiple slams, who will take on the herculean and nigh impossible task of beating, or at least meeting, the records left behind by the Big Three. If they want a player with the same entertaining playing style as Kyrgios, there are the Tiafoes and Bubliks. These are the players that the ATP should be promoting as the faces, as the future of the sport. Not Kyrgios, with his manufactured drama and constant on-court outbursts. Actual tennis. “Real” tennis, as they like to say.
This is quite the mammoth of an article, so if you’ve made it to the end, I really appreciate it! I just hope that any of this is even somewhat coherent, really. If you enjoyed it or agree with any of my points, I really hope that you can share it with your friends so they can hopefully enjoy it too. And hey, in the extremely unlikely event that someone who happens to work for the ATP ends up reading this, feel free to pass this along to your bosses, it’d be greatly appreciated!
- Ericka
nicely argued ericka, great stuff!
Very well written article! Thanks!