By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Wednesday August 31, 2022
Flushing Meadows, NY—Reaching the Wimbledon final is a moment that Nick Kyrgios will always cherish, but it clearly hasn’t satiated the talented Aussie, who continues to strutt his stuff on the hard courts of New York as the Grand Slam season winds down.
The 23rd-seed calmly pushed past France’s Benjamin Bonzi on Day 3, and afterwards told reporters how happy he is to have changed course in his career this season.
“This year's been amazing in so many different ways,” he said. “For my tennis, I kind of wanted to almost reinvent myself, get back to the top of the game where I know I belong.”
Kyrgios reiterated a point he made at Wimbledon this summer. If he had won the title in London, he wasn’t so sure he would have remained so driven to succeed. But the fact that he lost the final to Nick Kyrgios has only served to light further fire under Kyrgios. “The Wimbledon final was a turning point I think for me mentally,” he said. “If I won that match, I don't know where my motivation would have been at. Losing it and being so close, it was really tough for me to kind of swallow that.”
Kyrgios, who will face American wild card JJ Wolf in the third round, has never been beyond the third round at the US Open. That stat alone tells a story about how far from reaching his true potential the Canberra native has been over the years.
This year feels like a far different animal, however.
But expecting another Grand Slam final so soon is a bit naive, Kyrgios says.
“I got to probably the lower expectation of expecting to play like a Wimbledon final every time,” he said. “There's so many capable players who can play, so…Got to be a bit nicer to myself I think and just lower the expectations a bit”
Speaking of capable players, Kyrgios is currently in line with a fourth-round matchup with Russia’s Daniil Medvedev at the US Open.
He owns a 3-1 edge over Medvedev including a three-set victory over the World No.1 at Montreal this summer.
That success against Medvedev, and in general, has everything to do with Kyrgios arriving at the scene this season as a more mature, more determined athlete. It shows in his game and it shows in his words.
“I feel like in this part of my career, I just don't want to let people down,” he says. “I feel like I'm representing so many people. I know how much work goes into it with my team, there's a lot of people supporting me.
“I just remember doing a press conference here like maybe three or four years ago, I lost in the third round, I just felt horrible because I kept not exceeding expectations, winning. So I'm sitting here, I feel like this is probably the most pressure I've had on myself. I know that I'm capable of going to a slam final now and I really want to achieve. I want to bring my team with me. I want to do it together.”