Win or lost, the Nick Kyrgios show will never entertain. Wednesday night, after more than three hours on the track, the apostate moved on to the third round of the Australian Open with a roller coaster victory over five seats over Ugo Humbert, to the insane joy of a riotous John Cain Arena.
“Honestly, I do not know how I did it,” Kyrgios said afterwards. “It was one of the craziest games I’ve ever played.”
When Kyrgios walks up to you, it’s like coming face to face with a hip-hop star. The fading, the pace, the pimp slack; six feet and four inches imposing swag.
As a schoolboy with a ‘cuddly’ physique (his wordsnot mine) he was photographed in court in a Wu Wear top with a racket in his hand and a look on his face suggesting that he, like Wu-Tang Clan, ‘not nuttin ta f’ white ‘ is not. Like more than a guard noted, the Canberran plays tennis like Wu-Tang rooted in flesh, as it can fight up to nine characters like Wednesday night during its matches.
But the Staten Island collective is also known for their improvisation and creativity. A recent study suggests that Wu-Tang has one of the biggest words in hip-hop. Kyrgios is no different in his discipline. No one else serves forearms, as he did successfully in the opening set. No one chooses early on in a decisive set a tweener as an offensive strategy, just like him. He even paid his fees to OGs past with his turn on the Sneak Attack By Roger.
When Kyrgios walks away from you, the face is completely different. The broad shoulders surrounding the impressive strut in one direction look hunched over from the other side and form the silhouette of a man who is hunched over and uncomfortable. The bling and ink from the front simply becomes a mass-produced polyester shirt that attaches to a sweaty back when viewed from behind. The limp looks like, well, limp.
Which side Kyrgios displays depends on energy. After his armpit service in game four, he asked an already noisy audience to bring up the noise. Five games later, he repeats the gesture before Humbert serves to save a break point. Chest out, shoulders back, he was in his element.
Not more than ten minutes passed, and he was at the end of violating a code for a destructive version of his rocket. As the crowd held their breath, their champion intensified, his blows contained less mind and the collective faith sailed from the open roof. It was not an unknown text.
But the bad version of Kyrgios worked short to his advantage. Instead of playing to his Instagram account, the winner of six ATP tournaments played like a champion and opted for a series of sensible back-and-forth rallies. Humbert cuts first and one break per piece soon leads to one set piece. Kyrgios jumped and hit the air like a forward who worked out a final winner in cup time. The wagon was moving again.
Humbert, an unabashed leftist, and a trained pianist who enjoys playing the theme song from the movie Titanic, can be no different than Kyrgios. But after seven games of the third series, this contrast of style and personality recorded statistics, which were even almost every line. Then Kyrgios made a double mistake at the deuce, with the set at 3-4 and the sinking feeling returned. After the only interruption of the set, Kyrgios soon received a point penalty for a second violation of the code, this time for swearing.
An early break in the fourth allowed Humbert to control the pace for half an hour. It felt like a victory march. But when he had to serve at 5-4, Kyrgios, from the canvas, put up his guard again and found corners and vaguely returned, causing fans like Wrestlemania to walk out into the hallways. The ringmaster of John Cain Arena was suddenly in his happy place, enchanted and loose, slapping foundation and bait bombs with a spring in his step and electricity in the air. Two-and-a-half hours in the game is long to wait until the current comes, but it almost brought the house down.
A fierce wave of momentum crashed in the last set over Humbert. Kyrgios breaks serve in the fast time and during the conversion to the third game, the crowd howled Livin ‘on a prayer at a deafening volume. “This is the best tennis that has sounded since the pandemic,” beams Jim Courier.
It was a moment. A moment to drown out the negativity that has dominated the past days and months. A moment to delight in the power of a crowd.
Shortly afterwards, it was time for Nick Kyrgios to have a moment for himself. Short on his knees, then soon on his feet to greet the worshipers who forced him to an intoxicating triumph.
It took almost three days, but thanks to Nick Kyrgios, the Australian Open is finally underway.