He’s the racket-smashing, umpire-baiting bad boy of tennis. So why do those closest to him describe him as a puppy? Laura Pullman joins him in Dubai to find out.
Nick Kyrgios splits opinion like no other sportsman: for some he’s brilliantly shaking up the stale, pale world of professional tennis; for others he’s a petulant tosspot.
“You either love him or hate him, there’s no in-between,” says his manager and best friend, Daniel Horsfall, who receives abuse just for working with him. “So you are the human wart who manages Nick the filthy grub,” begins one email that he shows me.
Ever since he smashed his way to stardom in 2014 at the age of 19 by beating Rafael Nadal, then world No 1, in the fourth round at Wimbledon, the Australian has been making headlines for both his cocky brilliance and his bad behaviour. His rap sheet is long. He has been fined a record-breaking total of more than £450,000 ($860,000) for — deep breath — screaming at umpires; for “tanking”, ie purposefully not trying; for spitting at a spectator; for smashing rackets; for mimicking masturbation; and for telling his Swiss opponent Stan Wawrinka mid-match that another player had “banged your girlfriend”. At the Wimbledon final last year he demanded that the umpire remove a spectator “who looks like she’s had about 700 drinks” (she sued; Kyrgios donated $38,000 to charity to settle).
Drama is Kyrgios’s metier. Despite no grand slam victory, he is tennis box office gold with his raw talent, rebel persona and unpredictable repertoire (his signature is the “tweener” — a between-the-legs trick shot). Unsurprisingly it is the charismatic Kyrgios who’s the focus of the opening episode of Break Point, a new tennis docuseries that started last week on Netflix. The episode portrays him sympathetically — not only as a maverick agitator, but as a softy in the puppy-dog stages of love with his girlfriend, a 22-year-Instagram influencer called Costeen Hatzi. It could well win over a few sceptics. “He’s not a bad guy,” says his Greek rival Stefanos Tsitsipas in the series, “but he just becomes a devil when he enters the court.”
Seemingly every article about Kyrgios features the word “volatile”, yet both Horsfall and Kyrgios’s older brother, Christos, separately describe him to me as “super mellow”. Which is it, then?
“It’s odd for me because on the tennis court if I swear or just throw my racket I don’t think it’s volatile,” Kyrgios tells me. “It’s emotional, definitely, but I think more often than not I stay pretty level-headed.”
One problem, as he sees it, is that he’s often well behaved throughout long matches but then might smash a racket in frustration — and that’s the bit the pesky media show.
“Hold on a minute, the match was four hours,” he says. “So 99 per cent of it was even-keeled competing, showing what fighting spirit, discipline and hard work is, but then people who don’t watch tennis are only seeing a 30-second snippet. That doesn’t seem very fair.”
I get his point, but he has a tendency to sound like a child stuck on the “it’s not fair” record and seems incapable of taking responsibility for his actions. Doesn’t he purposefully act up on court too?
“I play up the show a little bit, the entertainment and all that type of stuff,” he admits. “But I think what I’ve done for tennis is unquestioned and, apart from Novak, Nadal and Federer, I’m the most followed person on social media and I’m probably the most watched.” (Kyrgios has 3.3 million Instagram followers compared with Nadal’s 17.4 million, Serena Williams’s 16 million and Andy Murray’s 1.8 million.) More personality equals more eyes on the sport equals more money for everyone, Kyrgios argues. The tricky part is channelling his fieriness to enhance his performance. “It has always been hard to find that balance, whether I’m too overpumped or too low on energy.”
When the anger boils over on court he often yells at his player box, where his loyal entourage sits.
“We say some things that try to reset his brain,” Horsfall explains. “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but he’s definitely getting better at handling that side of things.” Does he ever apologise for ranting at them? “He’s like a goldfish in that sense. As soon as he steps off the court tennis doesn’t exist.”
Watching him train on a sunny Dubai morning before our interview is a revelation. There’s no racket tossing, no tantrum throwing and only muttered swearing. There’s also no prize money on the line, no umpires to abuse and no crowds to entertain. He is practising with a golden-skinned, hairless-legged Ken doll in teeny shorts called Holger Rune, a Danish 19-year-old tipped for greatness.
When Kyrgios, the elder statesman at 27, plays a poor shot, he berates himself (“Oh my God, that’s so bad”), but when Rune hits a winner Kyrgios shouts praise. Then he delivers his effortlessly savage serve and you remember this is a man who has triumphed against the giants: Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer.
Off court he silently scowls for reluctant selfies with gathered fans. It’s a few days before Christmas and Kyrgios is in the United Arab Emirates for the World Tennis League, which bills itself as “the greatest show on court” but is really a money-spinning Mickey Mouse tournament. He is being paid more than £200,000 ($382,000), was flown first class with his girlfriend and they’re being put up in the five-star Taj Dubai.
“We’re treated like kings here,” says Kyrgios, freshly showered in his hotel suite post-training and wearing a white bucket hat. “I’ll pat myself on the back for getting into this position to look after my people.” His brother is in tow with his fiancée, Alicia, and their baby son, George. The gang have plans to visit an “escape room” (a puzzle-solving team game) and ride camels in the desert — which, Kyrgios points out, is good for ‘gram content.
He argues that one of his “greatest qualities” is his generosity and his trophy cabinet would be fuller if he didn’t give so much time to others. “If I was a bit more selfish in my career I think I probably would’ve had a more successful career. I probably would’ve been competing with grand slams.”
Who knows if that’s the case, but from spending a morning with him I can see he is a man who depends on his family and is attentive to them in return. And in any case he has hardly done badly. He is currently ranked 22nd in the world, has a net worth upwards of £12 million ($23 million) and was considered the star to watch at the Australian Open until he withdrew due to injury. Last year was the best of his career: he won the doubles at the Australian Open, won both doubles and singles at the Citi Open in Washington and was runner-up at Wimbledon, losing to Djokovic in a thrilling final.
It was while competing at SW19, however, that he was charged with assaulting an ex-girlfriend, Chiara Passari, whom he allegedly grabbed during a row in a hotel in December 2021, raising questions about whether he could be just as volatile off court as on. The case resumes in court next month in Canberra, where his lawyers will try to dismiss the charge on mental health grounds.
I ask him if there is anything he can say about former relationships that ended badly — awkward, given Hatzi is in the room.
“I guess it’s just all a learning experience,” Kyrgios replies. “Not just relationships, but even tennis matches where I’ve lost my cool or played the point poorly, you just look back and know how to deal with things better.”
Last February in an Instagram post Kyrgios detailed his struggles with depression, self-harm, alcohol and drug abuse, and revealed that he’d contemplated suicide, but said he has since turned his life around. His lowest period came when he was aged 22 to 24, winning tournaments and ostensibly flying high. “That’s scary for me because someone can seem like they’re on top of the world, but you never truly understand the internal battles that someone’s going through,” he says.
On tour he felt deeply lonely; at home he felt painfully disconnected from his family. He’d drink heavily (20 to 30 drinks a night, he has said) even before big matches, take drugs and party till dawn. On one morning in the UK leading up to Wimbledon in 2018, Horsfall couldn’t reach Kyrgios and used a phone app to track him — he was 42km away, passed out in a random stranger’s house. Kyrgios recalls spending days lying in the dark and how the self-harm — cutting and burning himself — reached a point of “doing it for fun”; the burn scars on his forearm are now covered with basketball-themed tattoos.
“I didn’t really have anyone to open up to and every time I did it was, like, ‘Oh, you’ve just got to push through it,’ " he says. “It was this constant pushing through and being so misunderstood. Now I don’t try to be anything that I’m not, whereas back then I really tried hard to stay in the lane that they wanted to put me in.”
He saw various psychologists but it was witnessing his parents’ distress that encouraged him to try to get better. Now he travels with a supportive entourage, avoids drugs, drinks sensibly and takes time off from tennis when he feels he is struggling. “I can’t hide in a room,” he says. “I just have to understand that this is my life and I have to embrace it more.” Would he be happier without his tennis talent? “It’s definitely a gift and a curse.”
In those dark days Andy Murray got in touch to offer support (Murray had spotted signs that Kyrgios was self-harming) and Kyrgios’s face lights up when I mention his name: “People in London think he’s quite bland but he’s actually hilarious. One of the funniest guys that I’ve met on tour.”
Kyrgios can also be an entertainer. He once begged a fan to fetch him a beer while he was on court (“Honest to God, get me one now”). But his angry outbursts mean he is more regularly compared to John McEnroe, the ranting racket-smasher of the Eighties. McEnroe’s tantrums did him no long-term harm: his media career flourished post-retirement. When the pair first met it was “touchy”. According to Kyrgios they were mentally sizing each other up and he felt McEnroe was going only on Kyrgios’s media portrayal. Now they have a “strong respect” for each other and would happily “grab a beer” together. “We have similarities in the sense that people have painted a kind of image of us and that’s what the world thinks we are.”
Kyrgios is clearly fed up with the negative press that he has long received, especially in his home country. “The narrative that they wrote early in my career, it’s impossible to shake,” he says without acknowledging how he helped that narrative blossom.
Unusually he hasn’t had a coach for more than five years and has shot down offers from McEnroe, among others. Federer and McEnroe himself had stints without a coach, but on tour today it’s rare for players to travel without one. “I don’t think it’s worth the money — they’re very, very overpriced,” he says. “No one knows my game better than me. I was the one holding the racket at seven, I know my strengths and my weaknesses, and if I want to work on them I’ll work on them.”
It seems as though he had a largely happy childhood in Canberra with his older siblings, Christos and Halimah, and parents, Giorgos, a house painter born in Greece, and Norlaila, a Malaysian princess turned computer engineer. As Kyrgios trains, his brother Christos shoots down any idea that their mother came from a world of palaces and tiaras, explaining that hers wasn’t a life of “super-luxury”: she was born into the royal family of her Malay province but renounced her title when she moved to Australia in her twenties.
Kyrgios recalls his mum first taking him to a group tennis lesson when he was a chubby seven-year-old (a growth spurt aged about 15 saw away the baby fat — he’s now 6ft 4in). “I was absolutely hating every minute of it,” he says. “She basically said, ‘Get out there and try to have some fun,’ and I picked it up pretty quickly. I guess it was always fate that me and tennis were going to be one.” As a boy his emotions were always on the surface: he’d cry on court and chuck rackets. “That little kid is still in me,” he admits. It sounds less that Kyrgios fell in love with tennis and more that, as he kept winning junior tournaments, he realised he had such a natural talent that it would be crazy not to carry on.
His parents were the “ultimate support mechanism” and sound more protective than pushy. “Every time there was a sleepover it was at my house,” he recalls, “they never really let me out of their sight.” Aged 14 he gave up playing competitive basketball (“my first love”) to focus on tennis and his parents drove him across Australia for tournaments: “They always spun it as everything was an opportunity to take a new experience in and embrace it.” (These days, Norlaila — known as Nill — can’t deal with the stress and no longer watches her son play, even on television.)
School was tougher — kids excluded him because he’d be away playing tennis for long stretches and teachers doubted that a “kid from Canberra” would achieve his dream of reaching a Wimbledon final. He plays down the bullying, which he has referenced before, but paints a picture of himself as a lone wolf walking to classes with headphones on and finally forming a friendship group with “a bunch of misfits”.
In 2014, as a 19-year-old wildcard entry to Wimbledon, his “life changed for ever” when he took on 28-year-old Nadal. Today he can still “remember pretty much every bit”. Kyrgios was one set up when he played a winning tweener to the crowd’s delight. “I could feel that Nadal knew my level was there at 19 to be able to beat some of the best in the world,” he says. Aceing Rafa 37 times, he won in four sets. “I just remember as soon as that match ended, it was like I arrived with a whole mountain of expectation.”
He lost in the quarter-finals and flew home to find paparazzi camped outside his house. Emma Raducanu, who won the 2021 US Open at the age of 18, can surely relate to the burden of overnight global expectation. Kyrgios would urge the 20-year-old Brit, who recently appointed her fifth coach in 18 months, always to remind herself of her grand slam triumph: “No one can ever take that away.” The media, he adds, love putting pressure on young talent: “We’ve got to remember that they’re human. They’re only 18, 19-year-olds dealing with just teenage things as well.”
Kyrgios knows about relentless attention. In Sydney, where he lives in a penthouse apartment with his girlfriend, he estimates that he’s stopped by strangers between 50 and 100 times a day: “It’s hard, it just feels like my energy is always being spent.” Plus, fans are expecting “the craziest person ever” thanks to his on-court antics. “I’m just, like, ‘I’m actually really normal.’ " When he loses a match his online critics don’t just attack him but go after his girlfriend on social media, mock his brother — who has had alopecia since he was a young child — and send racist abuse. “Athletes have a lot of haters in general,” he says, “but I’ve dealt with a lot more than most.”
Playing basketball several times a week with friends is his switching-off meditation, although it takes an extra toll on his body.
Unlike some interviewees Kyrgios doesn’t dial up the charm — smiles and eye contact are minimal — but he is open and far softer than I’d expected. He has always been “very emotional, very affectionate”, either “all in or all out”, and describes himself as spiritual without “lighting sage around the room killing evil spirits”.
On his left arm is a Disneyesque tattoo of a lion cub and a grown lion, the naive boy he was versus the self-assured man of today, he explains. “I’m only 27 but I feel soul-wise as if I’m 70. I’ve seen enough for 10 lifetimes.” His pleasures are simple — gaming for hours (Pokémon is a favourite), drinking six coffees a day (he sleeps “like a baby”) and spending money on nice restaurants (“the least I deserve after everything”) — but he describes living in a sadly muted state. “When really good things happen around me I’m kind of numb to it, and when sad things happen I’m still numb to it,” he says. “I’ve had so much stimulation in my life that I feel I’m just quite neutral all the time.”
That said, he is obviously passionate about “Coz” Hatzi, whom he met online in 2021. Within months her name was tattooed on his thigh: “She’s, like, ‘Well, you don’t have to get it if you don’t want to.’ And I was, like, I know girls and I know when she says ‘fine’ that means that she really wanted me to get it.”
What type of boyfriend is he? “I spoil her. I bought her a $15,000 bag yesterday, so she has it pretty good,” he says, quickly adding that he’s also loving in less materialistic ways and that her family has embraced him. He claims to be easy to live with and “super-low maintenance”. “I literally eat cabbage. All she has to do is cut up cabbage for me and serve it,” says Kyrgios, who follows a plant and seafood diet for animal rights reasons. Plus, he’s “relatively” clean: “I’ve lived with boys and they’re extremely messy. I’m very thoughtful. Like most of the time I bring her coffee.”
He says all this with a cheeky twinkle in his eye, but I suspect Hatzi has saintly patience. Marriage and children have been discussed — he wants four, she wants two — and their relationship has driven his motivation higher than ever. “I want to be able to provide for her and the family one day and that’s the ultimate goal.”
Part of the Kyrgios mythology is the idea that he doesn’t care about tennis or winning as much as his rivals. Is that an ego defence mechanism? “Early in my career that was put in my head a lot,” he says. “It’s not that I don’t care but I’ve had conversations with myself and I’m OK if, at the end of the day, I don’t win grand slams or if I’m not able to achieve maybe what other people think I should have achieved.”
In December, when Lionel Messi finally lifted the World Cup trophy for the first time in his 18-year career, Kyrgios believes that the Argentinian wasn’t feeling happiness but relief: “He’s just, like, ‘Finally, these people can just shut up and let me be now.’ " For himself, winning a grand slam (ideally Wimbledon, he says) would quieten his detractors. “No matter what criticism I have, that’s the answer.”
He doesn’t go in for prematch rituals and gives an incredulous “Oh, jeez no” when I raise the notion of a sex ban before big games. He muses that he’ll retire by 30 or “maybe a little bit over that” and is looking forward to the next chapter: “Tennis has always been the vehicle for me to do other things.” He thinks he’d be a great coach (presumably for a juicy salary), there’s the nascent NK Foundation, which aims to build a sports facility for underprivileged children in Melbourne, and he’s saving his most scurrilous tales for a memoir that will be “the best tennis one ever made”.
Throughout our conversation he returns to the gruelling nature of his sport and how spectators see only the “tip of the iceberg”. I suspect he’d have been happier playing professional basketball as part of a team. “Tennis is probably the hardest sport — it’s not just over a week to win a grand slam, it’s 14 days of enormous pressure and discipline and diligence,” he says. The toughest element is the “noise in his head”, which doesn’t let up for the two weeks of a tournament. “Mentally, after a big week and after all the media, the spotlight, my anxiety, it just never ends in your head,” he says, looking suddenly shattered. “When you’re on court that’s where you’re actually at peace a little bit. And then when you get off it that’s when the noise comes back.”
He might see himself as a wise lion but he’s a more complicated cat than that: generous, egotistical, sweet, surly and longing for a quiet life but loving the chaos. Yes, he’s petulant and volatile and lacking in much self-awareness, but put all that aside and the off-court Nick Kyrgios is unexpectedly likeable.
Smash hits: rants, rages and playing to the crowd
January 2015
The 19-year-old Kyrgios smashes his racket and launches expletive-laden rants at fans at the Australian Open.
August 2015
Fined £6,400 ($12,200) and given a suspended 28-day ban for trash-talking Stan Wawrinka at the Rogers Cup in Montreal, telling his opponent another player had “banged your girlfriend. Sorry to tell you that, mate”.
June 2018
Fined £13,000 ($25,000) after he is caught on TV mimicking a sex act with a water bottle at Queen’s. The BBC apologised to viewers.
May 2019
Calls Novak Djokovic “cringeworthy” in a podcast for blowing kisses to the crowds. “I just feel like he has a sick obsession with wanting to be liked,” Kyrgios says.
March 2022
Deals with a heckler in the crowd at Indian Wells by pointing to the actor Ben Stiller and saying: “Do I tell him how to act? No.”
March 2022
Apologises on Instagram for throwing a racket that nearly hit a ball boy during a match against Rafael Nadal at Indian Wells — which Kyrgios lost. “I’d love to get a racket!” the ball boy replied. “I accept the apology.”
September 2022
Fined £26,400 ($50,445) at the US Open for a succession of offences including spitting and smashing rackets.
November 2022
Donates £20,000 ($38,000) to Great Ormond Street Hospital to settle a defamation case brought against him by a spectator whom he accused of being “drunk out of her mind” at the Wimbledon final. He had complained to the umpire about her, saying she “looks like she’s had about 700 drinks”.
Written by: Laura Pullman
© The Times of London
