Drastic news for Australian tennis fans as Nick Kyrgios was forced to abandon his match against David Goffin when he was 7-6, 2-3 up because of a foot injury. The 20 year-old who was in scintillating form at the Hopman Cup and looked like a clear candidate to pull off some major upsets at the Australian Open is now a major doubt for next week’s event in Melbourne.
Kyrgios first called for a medical time-out at 3-2 in the first set but he soldiered on until 1-1 in the second set when he decided he would hold out a couple of games and call it quits.
“I jammed my achilles a little bit when I was training yesterday. It’s unlucky because I wanted to play out there. It didn’t get worse but I could feel it. I didn’t want to just go out there and pull the pin, I think there was enough tennis played”, said Kyrgios, who is optimistic it won’t hamper his options of featuring at the Australian Open next week, “I’m 100 per cent certain I’ll be ok. I’ll do a lot of treatment, my physio is coming tomorrow but I’m not worried at all. I just have to be smart about it”.
The other matches included yet another win from a Spanish player as Pablo Carreño backed up victories by Feliciano Lopez and Nicolas Almagro with a 6-4, 6-4 triumph over Marcos Baghdatis.
“I had a good finish, I’m very happy. I played some good tennis against a good player. It’s good to play in the heat which we will be experiencing next week”, claimed a buoyant Carreño.
And finally Omar Jasika put in a brilliant display to fall just short against Kei Nishikori by 6-1, 6-7, 10-4. The Japanese player was cruising at 6-1, 4-1 when he took his foot off the pedal and the young Aussie got himself back in it. In the end Nishikori took the super tie-break before the match between Alex Zverev and Kyle Edmund was cancelled without an official explanation.
