Australian tennis star Nick Kyrgios – who will return to action in December before the Australian Open – has said he doesn’t want to go out like Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal
Former world No. 13 Nick Kyrgios has said that, unlike Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal, he won’t be “crawling to the finish line” of his tennis career.
The 2022 Wimbledon finalist, who is planning a comeback in December before participating in the Australian Open, opened up on how he still battles with mental health issues. In fact, the Australian admitted he has to fight the stigma “most days”.
Kyrgios, 29, has only competed in one ATP match over the past year due to knee, foot and wrist injuries. And the setbacks were taking such a toll that he had hinted at possible retirement.
Murray, 37, said farewell to tennis at the Paris Olympics, while 38-year-old Nadal is set to say his goodbyes at the Davis Cup Finals in Malaga later this month. But both Grand Slam legends have had their careers marred by injuries in their final years.
Kyrgios – who shares a good rapport with the Scot – remarked: “I look at how Andy Murray’s doing it now, and how Rafael is going out, I don’t want to be like that either, I don’t want to be kind of crawling to the finish line in a sense.
“What Andy Murray’s achieved in this sport is second to basically no-one, like, unless you’re Novak [Djokovic], [Roger] Federer, or Nadal, like, the next person is Andy Murray. It’s like you’ve achieved everything. You deserve to go out, I think, a little bit more gracefully than he’s done. I think that the surgeries, the pain, it’s just not worth it, in my opinion.”
On The Louis Theroux Podcast (via the Daily Express), Kyrgios revealed that during a “bad period” at Wimbledon in 2019, Murray noticed he had been self-harming by cutting his forearms. And the Briton reached out in a show of compassion.
“It was pretty hectic,” Kyrgios confessed. “Just sharp things… yeah, I got bored. And then I guess just doing things like that. And then he noticed it and I obviously couldn’t go on Centre Court of Wimbledon with it. So I had to put like a sleeve on. Yeah, no-one noticed. It was horrible. I mean, I almost kinda enjoyed feeling that way. And that’s when I knew I had to get out of it.”
The tennis star openly shared that he once “genuinely contemplated” taking his own life and had spent time in a London psychiatric facility around the period of his tense match against Nadal at Wimbledon in 2019.
“Well, they wanted me to stay for a bit, but I was like, ‘I have other duties that I need to fulfil’,” he admitted. “I nearly got him though. I nearly beat him.”
Speaking on his struggles, Kyrgios added: “I was just struggling with being who I was, it was hard at that time and I didn’t feel like I could take a step back from the sport and kind of work on myself and get myself in the right headspace. I was just playing and playing and playing and kind of dealing with everything. And it was a dark time. Like I was drinking, and I was spiralling out of control, and I was continuing to play and travel. It was a lot.”
Kyrgios owned up to his heavy drinking during those times, saying he could knock back “20 or 30 drinks” a night. “I’d drink like a fish,” he said. “But then just wake up and go toe-to-toe with Nadal the next day. Give him a real challenge.”
When Theroux enquired as to whether he’s feeling well these days, Kyrgios confessed: “No, I mean, I fight it most days. Like, I don’t wake up feeling amazing… feel like I know my steps to get me out of my bad thinking now.
“I feel like I could go back into those habits in an instant. That’s how it feels. I feel like I could do those things, but I don’t want to. Like, before, I didn’t have any resistance. I don’t want to do that now.”
