Renowned coach Darren Cahill believes his countryman Nick Kyrgios “cares too much” and “really wants to win”, while assessing that tennis needs the return of firebrand Australian.
Cahill who is currently working with Jannik Sinner on the tour also draw parallels between the 20-year-old emerging American Ben Shelton and Kyrgios while stressing on the importance of personalities like them on the circuit.
Cahill’s former charge included major winners and world No. 1’s like Andre Agassi, Andy Murray, Lleyton Hewitt, Simona Halep and Ana Ivanovic.
Kyrgios could only manage to appear in one match throughout the 2023 season and that came earlier in June against Wu Yibing in Stuttgart Open during the European Grass swing in Germany. He has to skip the rest of season because of knee and wrist issues to complete a calendar slam of withdrawals.
The Aussie compiled his best numbers (37-10) in the last season where he reached the final of Wimbledon (L. to Djokovic) and thereafter won the Citi DC Open title.
Sitting behind a mic on an episode of the Advantage Connors podcast, Cahill laid the argument that the nonchalant and apparently doesn’t caring 28-year-old Aussie cares much more about the sport contrary to what is at times reflected by his body language.
“You feel like he doesn’t care. In fact, he looks like he cares too much because he ends up blowing up with his box – his coaching box throughout the course of a match because he really wants to win and he receives that support from his coaching box,” asserted the Australian.
“We need him back. It’s you know, the game is bigger than any one player of course, but certainly he’s a loss to the sport at the moment and if he’s playing well and physically feeling good – he brings a lot to every tournament he plays. So I’m just wishing him the best. I hope he gets healthy and we hope to see him back really soon.”
The former world #22 also cheered for ATP #19 Ben Shelton, who exhibited a surprise run to the Semis of the home major in New York before losing to eventual champion Novak Djokovic.
“He’s like Kyrgios, you like Kyrgios, you hate him, I don’t care. On the tour, he brings something different and people will go out and buy a ticket, and watch these guys play,” said the two-time ATP singles titlist
“And Ben brings a real joy in what he’s doing on the court, he’s not scared, he doesn’t care who he is playing. I love him, I think the fact that Novak [Djokovic] took him up a little bit [by imitating his celebration] was awesome. You can’t have robots on tour, you can’t have no personalities on tour.
“Incredibly brave in the big moments, he was certainly playing to the crowd, enjoying the crowd. Again, you need to put those results week after week to be a factor in the top 10.
“I think Ben is so young, maybe he’s not used to it, maybe a little bit too many expectations came onto his shoulders after the Australian Open. Now we’re going to see Ben consistently improve every week. I’m not saying he’s gonna race into the top 5. I think eventually he’s a definite top 10 player.”