Facing two break points, Nick Kyrgios pinned his first serve on the tee intersection of the Arthur Ashe Court. At the other end, Nick Kyrgios sprawled helplessly before raising his racquet to give Nick Kyrgios a clap.
Next point, Nick Kyrgios’s serve was into the fat part of the box. Nick Kyrgios stepped in and rifled a two-handed backhand down the line. What a shot – and a break.
At the serving end, Nick Kyrgios smashed his racquet on the blue surface he sometimes calls, with an insider’s reverence, ‘The Ashe’. Not so reverent this time, and another few thousand dollars of tennis technology, which can withstand anything except a professional’s frustration, went down the toilet.
It’s unclear if Nick Kyrgios did this from a spontaneous loss of temper or more craftily to release endorphins and put himself back in the mood.
Maybe both.
At the end of a fabulous roller-coaster of a match, Nick Kyrgios shook the umpire’s hand and danced into the centre of the Ashe, arms saluting the adoring masses.
Nick Kyrgios at Flushing Meadows.Credit:Getty
On the other side of the net, Nick Kyrgios gave the umpire a curled lip, pretended to offer his hand before pulling it away, spat in the direction of his support box which had failed him yet again, and, having run out of other people whose fault it was, directed his attention to what remained of his tools. An overhead smash into the floor.
A pulverising forehand into a chair. Tennis-obsessed child stars and their parents watched aghast, calculating how much they could have saved if Nick Kyrgios had just handed those racquets, as souvenirs, over the wall.
As Nick Kyrgios stalked off to the changing rooms in search of something else to destroy, Nick Kyrgios charmed the world with his wit during his post-match interview. In his later press conference, Nick Kyrgios was at his happiest, as it was entirely within his power whether he dazzled his questioners through his honesty or dismissed them with a sneeringly-tilted Boston Celtics cap.
He cares too much, he cares too little … who cares at all when he can toy with a nuffie public who doesn’t know him? In that room, the two Nicks came back together.
Credit:Getty/AP
When they say that Kyrgios polarises the tennis world, they forget that at the centre of that world is the most polarised figure of all. Kyrgios’s battle against himself has taken on the dimensions of a Borg-McEnroe Wimbledon epic, repeated year after year and never achieving resolution. Which side wins? Does he care too much or too little?
Is winning the all-consuming thing in this match between Nick on and Nick off, or does it not matter at all?
The debate goes on.
The two Nicks polarise communities but not individuals. Whichever way their opinion falls, there aren’t many undecideds. The rest of the population simply opts out. It’s more like an American election than an Australian one. Pro or Anti? Everyone knows where they stand, or more precisely which foxhole they are dug into.
This is problematic for the idea of patriotism, its lurking contentiousness given full flow by one tennis player. As an Australian, do you have an obligation to put all else aside and rally behind your countryman battling away on harsh foreign courts while pining for Canberra?
Is that what patriotism is, or is it the last refuge of scoundrels? Are you even more obliged to feel ashamed of being Australian, or is that just another, warped, form of patriotism (even though, it seems, in New York his Australianness is celebrated as a novelty and certainly preferred over, say, Russianness).
The question of patriotism in sport is fascinating, as long as you are not blind about it, in which case it is a kind of steamroller without a steering wheel. Many believe patriotism should trump all else. My countryman, right or wrong. Many others believe with equal sincerity that right or wrong come first.
As a result, there have always been Australians who barrack against their own cricket team at times of its perceived arrogance, against their own Wallabies for their haplessness, and against their own Socceroos because of their ‘New Australian’ surnames.
Instead of offering one of the few remaining simple things in life, patriotism ends up as complicated and toxic as everything else, unless we are gifted that rare case, an Ash Barty or a Steph Gilmore or a Ken Rosewall or an Ollie Hoare – quite a lot, really – who walk the international stage while balancing sportsmanship with competitive
fire.
‘Kyrgios’s battle against himself has taken on the dimensions of a Borg-McEnroe Wimbledon epic’
Otherwise, however, the passage of time just increases the difficulties. Even sportspeople you’d expect to be bankers for national pride, like Kyle Chalmers or Cameron Smith, start arguments. Oh, for the days of Newk and Evonne and the Roses Lionel and Murray. But nostalgia can also be a fiction, and our arguments (over Our Margaret Court, over Our Dawn Fraser, even Our Don Bradman) reach their claws into the past.
Can Australians really speak as We and claim any sportsperson to be Ours? Maybe those personal pronouns are the big illusion.
The tricky question of patriotism is less pressing when you’re on the island itself, which must be why Australians are so wedded to their internal codes such as the AFL and NRL, their popularity reflected in the AFL’s leviathan broadcast deal.
To love your suburb and loathe your neighbours feels more pure and simple. When your team is Collingwood or South Sydney and your enemies are so close, you don’t have to decide between your colours and the person wearing them.
In the small worlds of footie, the colours provide the required loyalty. Suburban tribalism is the ultimate sports-washing.
Personally, patriotism has never been my bag. Australians have, since the cultural cringe, always been prone to embarrassment about themselves, and that’s embarrassing too, but it seems to be part of the deal of being Australian.
In Nick Kyrgios I see someone still very young struggling with a dependence on his own rage. Like many individuals, he can’t yet figure out if anger is a thing to be controlled or a thing to feed off.
Like any addictive substance, it is habit-forming. If he is as prone to depression and possible self-harm as he has said, then a country’s embarrassment is surely a secondary issue.
You pity and worry for the people around him when he’s being Nick Kyrgios, but you also know they have fun with him and love him to bits when he’s being Nick Kyrgios. In that sense, this slowly maturing man represents quite well a still young nation that is struggling to work out how it feels about itself.
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