Eight years ago, back when the only interest people had in Nick Kyrgios was purely athletic, a thrilling four-set win over Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon made the Aussie an instant global star.
One of tennis’ most fascinating rivalries is set for a dramatic new chapter on Friday night when Nick Kyrgios and Rafael Nadal meet for a spot in the Wimbledon final. The opening chapter was written eight years at the same venue.
A wildcard entry at the All England Club, and ranked just 144 in the world, Kyrgios mowed through Frenchmen Stephane Robert and Richard Gasquet, then Czech Jiri Vesely, to set up his showdown with Nadal, a legend in his prime years. He took the first set on a tiebreaker, then lost the second, during which he produced the shot of the match, if not the year – an audacious, instinctive, opinion-splitting ‘tweener’, a stroke that would become one of his trademarks, and a tantalising taste of what was to come.Seventy winners and 37 aces later, Kyrgios was a global megastar, the first player from outside the top 100 to knock out a world number one at a grand slam for more than two decades. Australian tennis had a new hero.
Those comments, and Kyrgios’ angry reaction to them, helped fuel the animosity between the two, which boiled over a few months later at Wimbledon when they met in the second round. Nadal won in four sets and Kyrgios went off the boil, attempting to hit his opponent with a stinging forehand. The Spaniard holds a 6-3 edge in their head-to-head record.
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