By Melissa Woods
A pep talk at Wimbledon from former arch-rival Novak Djokovic spurred Nick Kyrgios to continue his tennis comeback, which he will officially launch at the Brisbane International next month.
Kyrgios and fellow Australians Jordan Thompson, Alexei Popyrin and Ajla Tomljanovic were announced on Friday for the pre-Australian Open tournament, which gets underway on December 29.
Kyrgios has managed just one Tour match since the 2022 US Open quarter-finals due to career-threatening wrist and knee injuries which required three rounds of surgery.
That New York run came six weeks after reaching the Wimbledon decider when he came closest to an elusive major crown before falling in four sets to Novak Djokovic.
The 29-year-old said he contemplated giving away tennis with his wrist super slow to heal from surgery 15 months ago.
“It was a wrist reconstruction, so there was four holes drilled in my hand, and there’s a piece of string kind of holding my wrist together and my fingers looked like sausages when I got out of the surgery,” said Kyrgios, who won the Brisbane International in 2018.
“I was in a cast for about 12 weeks, no movement, and I basically just had to relearn how to use my right wrist again, even just carrying grocery bags, anything was super painful.
“But then I started getting some real improvement at the nine-month mark … to a point where I feel like I’m playing how I was in 2022.”
While at Wimbledon this year working in commentary, Kyrgios hit with former world No.1 Djokovic with the record-setting Serb proving an unlikely source of inspiration.
“I was hitting with Novak and when he said to me, ‘It doesn’t look like you’ve had surgery’, and that was a big motivation to say like maybe I’m actually making some inroads and some progress into getting back because I didn’t really know.
“That was a big drive for me … so, if he didn’t say that, I don’t know if I would have been motivated and if I would have kept pushing on the thought, but that was definitely a big part of the journey when he said that to me.”
With his last Tour match a short-lived return to grass at Stuttgart in June 2023, Kyrgios has also committed to the 2025 Australian Open.
First he will suit up in the World Tennis League exhibition event in Abu Dhabi, with the mixed team event also attracting the likes of Iga Swiatek, Casper Ruud, Aryna Sabalenka, Taylor Fritz and Daniil Medvedev.
A winner of seven titles on the ATP Tour, the one-time world No.13, who is currently unranked, still has grand slam ambitions.
“I’ll have to be reasonable with myself as there was a fair chance of me not even returning to this level and playing confidently so I think I’ve already exceeded a lot of expectation,” he said.
“But I’m my hardest critic and I want to win matches, I don’t want to make up the numbers.
“The way I’m hitting it now, I’ve never hit it as good as I’m hitting it now so I’m just going to take it day by day.
“I generally think that my level is still high enough to be able to compete for these kind of tournaments and grand slams so I’m excited to be back.”
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