Nick Kyrgios says there is still a ‘fire in his belly’ to play competitive tennis as he returns to the practice courts next week.
The 28-year-old hasn’t played a match on the Tour since last June and hasn’t won back-to-back matches since October 2022 due to a series of injury issues. Within the past 18 months, Kyrgios has undergone surgery on both his wrist and knee. Due to his inactivity, he currently doesn’t have an ATP ranking but when he returns he will be able to enter tournaments with the use of his protected ranking.
“It’s arguably been one of the hardest years of my life tennis wise,” Kyrgios told The AO Show podcast.
“Everything else has been amazing, I can’t complain about anything else. But tennis wise, I’ve had some really hard conversations with myself.”
Despite the setbacks, Kyrgios is eager to resume his career but admits he doesn’t know when he will be able to return to the Tour yet.
“Like why am I doing all this? Like I don’t have to do it, but I’m doing it for some reason,” he said of his rehab process. “So I know there’s still fire in the belly, which is good.
“I’m hitting for the first time next week, so as soon as I get back out on court, I guess it’s just going to be starting up, getting that load back through my wrist and my body.
“But look, I definitely will be coming back. It’s just hard to put an exact date on it because the injury was quite severe.”
So far in his career, the Australian has recorded more than 200 wins on the Tour and has peaked at a ranking high of 13th. He is a former Wimbledon finalist and has won seven ATP titles with three of those triumphs being at 500 events. His current prize money earnings stand at $12,486,696.
Whenever Kyrgios does return to action, he intends to enjoy his time on the Tour as much as possible.
“I’m getting to the point of my career where I know that I’ve had a lot of success and many athletes don’t even have a quarter the success of that, so it’s selfish for me to come back and demand to be making Wimbledon finals again,” he said.
“I’m going to take my time, come back and just enjoy being back out there.”
Kyrgios is one of the few players to have beaten every member of the Big Four at least once. Out of the quartet, the only person who he has a winning head-to-head record against is Novak Djokovic who he leads 2-1.
