Home » “Why?”: a furious Nick Kyrgios attacks the ATP over clay tournaments

Tennis for Nick Kyrgios boils down to two surfaces: cement and grass. The two finest results of the Australian tennis player’s career came in these tournaments, both this year. He and Thanasi Kokkinakis won their first Grand Slam doubles trophy earlier this year on their home court.

Six months later, the Canberran returned to a Grand Slam final, but this time as a singles player: after Rafael Nadal withdrew from Wimbledon due to injury, Kyrgios beat Novak Djokovic in the final.

Clay, on the other hand, was not able to produce these kinds of outcomes. Since the Internazionali di Roma in Roma three years ago, the Australian number two has not played a clay-court tournament. The Houston interlude this year (a tournament on a different clay from the others) is the only clay-court appearance he has made since 2019.

Kyrgios’ run at Roland Garros came to an end in 2017, as he lost to Kevin Anderson in the second round at the only Grand Slam tournament held on clay: the 2017 Roland Garros.

Anxieties to this surface, on the other hand, are specific to a timetable.

Prior to concrete, Kyrgios was anti-clay.

One of the clay-court tournaments that takes place between Wimbledon and the start of North American cement was scheduled on the ATP website’s Twitter feed.

As a response to Kyrgios’ question, “Why clay before the US Open swing?” From Bastard to Hamburg, from Gstaad to Kitzbuhel and Umag is where the Australian draws his line between the grass and concrete tournaments.

It’s going to North America immediately, to Washington as a warm-up tournament for the Montreal and Cincinnati Masters 1000 tournaments and, most crucially, the US Open, when these tournaments were completed.