When Kyle Edmund blew up at the chair umpire in Eastbourne this week, rousing the gentle citizens parked in the sunshine on Centre Court, it was as if an earthquake had rippled along the south coast.
This, they thought, was not meant to be. However the most polite player in tennis has, what Australians call, a bit of mongrel in him. John McEnroe, who has a PhD in attitude, applauds the rousing of the beast, occasionally.
“I don’t know if he’s a nice guy,” the American said as Edmund, ranked 18th in the world but seeded 21 at Wimbledon, prepares for his first-round match at Wimbledon against the Australian Alex Bolt. “He seems like a nice guy. The times I’ve met him, he seems like a shy, nice guy. Maybe he’s a mean son of a bitch, I don’t know.
“The killer instinct is extremely important. It feels that someone like [the Canadian teenager Denis] Shapovalov has that, if I had to pick one guy. He’s ready to go, he’s out there. That’s hard to come by at that age.
“Edmund has done it the more traditional way. But there’s guys in the tennis books, even hall-of-famers you thought of as nice guys, like Pete [Sampras] – a guy you thought was soft, couldn’t win the big ones. Well, he ended up winning 14.”
Edmund is still to win any titles [apart from the Estoril Open doubles with Cameron Norrie in May] but reached the Marrakech final this year, as well as the semi-finals of the Australian Open. There is a distinct feeling he is getting closer to his breakthrough but nobody is quite sure when that may happen.
McEnroe said: “I saw him when he played a guy who was at my academy years ago in the juniors. I thought this guy is a big strong kid, nice kid, top 30 maybe. When I saw him in Australia it seemed like, OK, he was making progress, inching it up a little bit.
“As I was looking over the course of four or five years, maybe it’s top 25, possibly top 20 – but not enough to do the whole thing. But then I was really surprised and impressed with the improvement.
“I was watching when he had Jack Sock down 5-1 in the third in Paris [at the Masters in 2017] and then he blew that, Sock won and Edmund was like: ‘What the hell happened there?’ He lost a lot of close matches.
“But battling the way he did in that heat in Melbourne showed me something about his fitness because it was brutal that first week and in a fair amount of that tournament. So I now look at him, long story short, he’s got top-10 potential.”
But McEnroe would like to see even more “mongrel” from Edmund – more Eastbourne, even. “That was a tough loss [over five sets in the French Open third round against Fabio Fognini],” he said. “It’s a match he should have won. But I could see definitely how he could lose against Fabio. The guy throws everything at you, mentally and tennis-wise, and Kyle succumbed ever so slightly. So that was a tough one. To take that step where you’re actually winning majors? That would require more work.”
Bolt, a left-handed six-footer with a big forehand who is finally delivering on his potential at 25, two years older than Edmund, is ranked 205 in the world, and up for the challenge.
“He’s going to have the crowd all his way but it’s going to be an unbelievable experience and I’m just going to take it in,” Bolt said. “He’s dangerous on any surface but I’m sure if I play to my strengths and how I want to play I know I’m going to be able to take it to him.”
