Nick Kyrgios has a message for tennis fans: Don't lump me in with Bernard Tomic.
The Australian No. 1 takes Tomic to task in a new article he wrote for Players Voice, "The Battle Raging Inside Me."
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Kyrgios says Tomic has "lost his way" and continuously contradicts himself with his statements and actions.
"You’d also be wrong if you tried to lump me in the same category as Bernard Tomic," Kyrgios writes. "Bernie has lost his way. We were pretty good mates when I was younger. I obviously didn’t know the tennis tour too well back then and we were guys of similar age, representing the same country, on the road at many of the same tournaments.
"But a lot has changed since then. He needs to figure out what he wants to do. I can’t relate to anything he says anymore. He says one thing and he does the other. And he contradicts himself all the time. He says tennis doesn’t make him happy, that he doesn’t really like the game, yet he says the only thing that will really make him happy is winning a grand slam. It doesn’t make sense at all."
The feud between the former Davis Cup teammates dates back to March of 2016 when Tomic accused Kyrgios of "faking" illness to avoid playing in Australia's Davis Cup defeat to the United States.
That exchange was broadcast on television and posted online later by The Age.
After Tomic’s loss. Kyrgios himself took to Twitter to lash back at Tomic’s claims.
In their post-match press conference, Tomic revealed that he spoke with Kyrgios on the phone to air his views.
"It was just in the heat of the moment I said it," Tomic said. "Obviously I would have loved him to be here, but he is obviously sick like he says he is, and for me I think just now it will be seeing if he actually plays Indian Wells because a similar situation happened last year where he didn't come to Czech and he had stress fractures and somehow played Indian Wells and felt good. So now it's going to be really funny for me to see the next two days whether he plays or not, which I think he will."
Among the other revelations from Kyrgios' article:
*The death of his grandmother two years ago took a heavy emotional toll. "If I'm honest, I’d say I haven’t committed to tennis the way the game needs me to since she died," Kyrgios wrote.
*His hip injury will "sooner, rather than later, require surgery."
*Wealth that comes from winning a major title is not a motivating force in his career. "I can honestly say winning a Grand Slam would not make me the happiest person on earth. As I wrote previously, I just love being a normal guy and having enough money to live a normal life. I don’t need the excess money at all. We’re a lot different," Kyrgios wrote.
Photo credit: Tennis Australia