A devastated Nick Kyrgios has already set his sights on recovering from his untimely knee injury in time to better his sparkling 2022 season following his “brutal” 11th-hour withdrawal from the Australian Open on the eve of his home grand slam.
Kyrgios confirmed the news with a “mixture of emotions” in an unexpected media conference alongside his physiotherapist on Monday afternoon, the day before he was due to play his first-round match against Roman Safiullin.
The world No 21 pulled out of Australia’s United Cup campaign late last month before also withdrawing from the second of the Adelaide International warm-up events, leaving him with little preparation.
On Monday it was revealed an MRI uncovered a cyst caused by a tear in his left meniscus, which his physio, Will Maher, said is not career-threatening but would not allow him to play at his best and risked affecting the remainder of his 2023 season should he attempt to put it through the rigour of a grand slam campaign.
“I’m devastated, obviously,” Kyrgios said. “It’s my home tournament, I’ve had some great memories here – obviously last year winning the title in doubles and playing the best tennis of my life probably. Then going into this event as one of the favourites, it’s brutal.
“It always goes back to the last grand slam I played, the US Open … I was extremely hard on myself after that loss in the quarter-finals, thinking that I could win it from there on. I just had the Aus Open on the back of my mind from that day forth as soon as I got off the court against [Karen] Khachanov. I always wanted to just do everything right and train right and tick every box, and just be ready for the Aus Open.”
Maher said Kyrgios “didn’t pull up great” from Friday’s exhibition match against Novak Djokovic and been experiencing discomfort the last week.
“We used the match, the charity event against Novak, as a gauge to see if he could compete at that highest level,” Maher said. “He didn’t pull up great, and he still tried to give himself every chance in the following days to have subsequent training. But it was clear with each passing session that he was getting sorer and sorer.
“I think we’ve made the sensible decision to withdraw him because at this stage he wants to feel mentally comfortable that he can go seven matches, he can go the distance, and needs to be able to do potentially seven three-hour matches. Getting on the court simply wasn’t enough for him.
“The situation now is, which we wanted to prevent him from having further injury or making that injury worse.”
The 27-year-old will return to Canberra at the end of this week for arthroscopic surgery to remove the cyst and “clean up” his meniscus before using February to recover, with a slated return in time for Indian Wells in March.
“Obviously this coming around is just bad timing, but that’s life – but injury is a part of the sport,” Kyrgios said. “I guess I can draw some inspiration from someone like Thanasi [Kokkinakis] who has had a bunch of injuries and has bounced back.
“I’m not doubting I will be back to my full strength and playing the tennis I was playing prior to this event. All I can do now is just look forward, do what I need to do and come back.”
It means Australia will be without its top-ranked men’s and women’s singles players, after Ajla Tomljanović also withdrew injured over the weekend.
