At your service
Having spoken before The Championships started about both his mind and body being in a “good place”, Nick Kyrgios has returned to the familiar territory of the Wimbledon second round after an injury-enforced year away.
The No.15 seed eked out a 7-6(3), 7-6(4), 6-7(5), 6-3 defeat of Uzbekistan veteran Denis Istomin in a contest so tight that it contained a single service break and the final points tally was Kyrgios 137, Istomin 134.
The Kyrgios serve helped, of course. It usually does. The Australian clouted 42 aces and 74 others were not returned. Istomin, too, played and served at a high level, credited with 31 winners to just eight unforced errors, including just one across the last two sets.
"A very tough match,’’ Kyrgios said, admitting to some pre-match nerves. “I didn't play anywhere near my best tennis today. I served well. But I struggled to find rhythm. That's what he does so well on the grass court. He served really well today. I thought he played really, really well. That match could have gone either way, to be honest."
With so little between the pair, Kyrgios gained the early advantage through the first two tie-breaks, and even at this relatively early stage of his career, the 23-year-old has built a formidable record that has improved to 81/57. If it was possible to “out-tie-break” an opponent rather than outplay them, at that stage, it was.
The pattern continued in the third set, despite growing signs of Kyrgios' frustration over his inability to put the dogged world No.92 away. But then, at 4-5, he was forced to save two set points to force a tie-break and, when it arrived, it was Istomin’s own impressive cache of unreturnables serves and unerring accuracy off the ground that allowed him to claim his first set of the nine the pair had played.
Kyrgios may be many things, but dull is not one of them, and his verbal jousting with chair umpire Carlos Ramos started even before the coin toss. Ramos wanted Kyrgios to hurry up; gave him a 10-second warning. Kyrgios hadn’t put his shoe on, wasn’t ready yet.
By the first sit-down there was contention over a let call, or lack thereof. Later, an exchange over a non-functioning Hawk-Eye, and then, early in the fourth set, a foot fault call that prompted Kyrgios to tell Ramos that “my opponent’s laughing at it, he’s laughing at you’’.
Kyrgios admitted: "I just have so many thoughts when I'm out there. I get so angry. I just go through so many different patches in a game. I guess it's so hard for me to find that balance.
"I look like I don't care one minute, then the next minute I'm playing really well. Not much really goes on, to be honest… It’s a tug of war all the time.’’
Through it all, Istomin remained cool and impassive, although both players consoled a ball girl who left the court in tears after being accidentally struck by a 135mph Kyrgios serve in the fifth game that cannoned into her upper arm.
By then, the match seemed to be turning, slightly, with Istomin striking ground stroke winners off both wings and raising his level as an agitated Kyrgios was more frequently starting to question his own. Almost against the tide, the Canberran conjured the only break of the match in the eighth game, before safely closing it out to improve his Wimbledon record to 11 wins and four defeats.
Kyrgios' 50th Grand Slam match marked his Wimbledon return after last year's retirement with a left hip injury two sets into his opening round against Pierre-Hughes Herbert. In each of his other three years at Wimbledon he has reached at least the fourth round, including that electric run past world No.1 Rafael Nadal to the quarter-finals on his debut as a wild card in 2014.
The young man who was in a hurry that year and repeated the last-eight result at the 2015 Australian Open has since seen his progress stall somewhat at the majors. Injuries have had something to do with that, and a chronic elbow injury most recently prompted Kyrgios’ withdrawal on the eve of his Roland-Garros opener.
But he resumed by reaching the semi-finals at both Stuttgart and Queen’s Club, where it took Roger Federer and Marin Cilic, respectively, to beat him. When physically fit and in the right headspace, the Australian has shown there is no player he cannot beat.
