Wimbledon 2022: A little "Thick Kyrgios" and a sad Spaniard
Rafael Nadal pulled the emergency brake, Nick Kyrgios reached the final without a fight: the eagerly awaited semi-final between the two fell victim to a seven-millimeter tear.
by SID / tennisnet
last edit: Jul 08, 2022, 06:50 pm
The greatest match in history was history before the first serve. "As everyone has seen, I suffer from abdominal pain. I have a tear in my muscle," said Rafael Nadal, finally pulling the emergency brake: "It makes no sense to play if I want to continue my career." A seven millimeter long tear in the abdominal muscles was ultimately too much even for the king of pain.
And now? Nick Kyrgios posted a picture of himself as a child on his Instagram account, modestly named "k1ngkyrg1os," showing a slightly overweight boy of about 10 holding a tennis racket. Underneath he wrote "Wimbledon final" and put three smileys behind it: "It's so sick."
No "wild card" for Taylor Fritz
And yet Kyrgios was looking forward to the semifinals against Nadal. To a match that, in his opinion, should become the most watched in tennis history. "I'm sure everyone wanted to see how we both went into battle," said Kyrgios on Friday, he himself initially "felt disappointment", now he has to do without the "adrenaline" before the final. Because Nadal played the party crasher - and thus triggered a somewhat absurd discussion about the topic of lucky losers.
In any case, the outcry on social media was great: Taylor Fritz, whom a battered Nadal had defeated in five sets in the quarter-finals, should now get his place in the semi-finals. Andy Roddick has a very clear opinion on this. "No, no, no, no, no," wrote the former world number one on Twitter: "You can't lose a semifinal and then win a Grand Slam." Fritz also says clearly: If he doesn't manage to defeat Nadal in the match, then he doesn't deserve it either - it's that simple.
Nadal wants to go to the US Open
Nick Kyrgios will not care about this discussion, he is in the final of Wimbledon, in the first Grand Slam final of a changeable career, a restless life. "He finally appreciates where he is," his mother Norlaila told the Sydney Morning Herald. With his girlfriend Costeen Hatzi at his side, her son doesn't just think about tennis: "That's the best thing about the whole thing. You have to enjoy your life. I'm really glad that he's doing it now."
Rafael Nadal couldn't really enjoy his situation. The day after the five-set match against Fritz, the indestructible Spaniard tried it in training, but the attempt ended. The serve is the problem, he said after careful consideration in the early evening: "I won't be able to pull off any real serves for a while." Nevertheless, Nadal wants to compete again at the US Open in New York at the end of August, even if the great chance of the calendar Grand Slam is now gone.
Kyrgios, meanwhile, tried to downplay the importance of his Wimbledon trip as much as possible. "You know, it's always just a tennis match," he said very seriously: "The important thing is that I go to bed at night and I'm Nick Kyrgios, just normal." In its particular case, the little word "normal" leaves a lot of room for interpretation.
Here is the individual tableau in Wimbledon
wimmap