Nick Kyrgios broke down in tears at Indian Wells, Calif. on Thursday night as he was forced to retire injured from his first-round match at the BNP Paribas Open against Botic Van de Zandschulp.
Kyrgios, 29, had been unsure of whether he was going to play the match after feeling a sharp pain in his right wrist toward the end of a practice session earlier in the week. While receiving treatment on it during the second set of the match, he wiped away tears.
It had been an even contest in the first set and Krygios had a set point in a tiebreak, but he ultimately lost it and was trailing 7-6(7), 3-0 when he was forced to pull out.
In a news conference afterwards, Kyrgios described his progress and level of play as irrelevant if his body does not hold up. “I’m there, but if I’m not able to finish matches it doesn’t really matter,” he said.
Kyrgios has lost all three of his singles matches this year. He underwent wrist surgery in September 2023, when the pain he was feeling made it difficult for him to do simple things like turn a doorknob or open a car door. An MRI showed a full rupture of the scapholunate ligament, which provides important stabilization for the wrist, similar to the role played by the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in the knee. And just as an ACL rupture is the injury most feared in many sports, for tennis players a damaged wrist is often the hardest injury to overcome. Former U.S. Open champion Juan Martin del Potro and one-time world No. 27 Laura Robson are among the players to have had their careers seriously compromised or ended by wrist surgeries in the last few years.
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And Kyrgios said in the interview room on Thursday night that his operation was even more complicated: “No one in the sport has had a wrist reconstruction and tried to play after that. There’s been players that have had wrist surgeries and nowhere near as bad as what I had.”
“It would be nice if someone had this injury prior if I could just go there and ask them, okay, these are setbacks you were having. It’s all an experiment at this point. I was told I was arguably maybe not ever playing tennis again. I feel I’m like right there, I feel like I can compete,” the Australian added, pointing to having opportunities against an opponent who beat Carlos Alcaraz in straight sets in last year’s U.S. Open.
Kyrgios had the best period of his career in early 2022, when he reached the Wimbledon final and the last eight of the U.S. Open. His injury problems began shortly after.
“I had an amazing season, literally knocking on the door of a Grand Slam, and then you just get pulled right back, and now you’re gonna start from — I literally don’t have a ranking at the moment, was out for one-and-a-half years, and I’m trying to work my way back,” he said.
Kyrgios is next scheduled to play at the Miami Open, which begins the week after next, but his participation there is now in doubt. “I’ll just keep looking forward and try and do the right thing,” he said.
For van de Zandschulp, the reward for beating Kyrgios is a second-round match against 24-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic.
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(Photo: Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)
