Array
The time was 4pm, 27 hours before Nick Kyrgios was due to play his opening match and three minutes before he confirmed he would not. The announcement on the PA that “Nick Kyrgios is on his way to the main media conference room” was so unanticipated that journalists had to run to get there before he did.
You never know what you will get with Kyrgios, but 11th-hour withdrawals have become a theme of his non-existent 2023 season. It started with the United Cup, when his Australia teammates were informed 10 minutes before their joint press conference in Sydney that not only would he not be there but would not be playing any part in the competition.
That was an ankle problem, sustained late last year during an exhibition tournament in Dubai, which also forced him out of the second Adelaide International warm-up event the following week. Perhaps because it is Kyrgios, the authenticity of the injury was treated with suspicion, to the point that his manager, Daniel Horsfall, hoped the doubters “now realise the injury is genuine”.
Now, on the eve of his match at the Australian Open, it is the knee. But this time there was no room for doubt because Kyrgios had brought with him a press conference chaperone – his physiotherapist. Here was Will Maher, his personal fact-checker with the medical parlance to prove it. We were furnished with mentions of the “lateral meniscus” and a “parameniscal cyst”, even a “gruesome” drainage procedure he underwent last week. Kyrgios subsequently shared a photo of the bloody gunge that was extracted: see Appendix 3 on Instagram for supplementary material.
Maher did a good chunk of the talking, too. He made it clear his patient’s small meniscus tear could have become “much more complicated” and adversely affect his game in the longer term had he attempted to play here.
