Such was the nature of his first round victory over Radek Stepanek that Australia’s Nick Kyrgios made this bold forecast afterwards: “I do believe I can do good things in this tournament, go far, potentially win it”.
To set up a second round match against Dustin Brown, Kyrgios needed to play impressively, occasionally brilliantly, at his third Wimbledon.
He needed to fight off the guile and experience of the veteran Stepanek and, perhaps most importantly, he needed to avoid applying a match to his notoriously short fuse.
He succeeded admirably on all three counts as he beat Stepanek 6-3, 6-4, 6-7(9), 6-1, showing that at the age of 21, he is fast maturing.
Having been surprisingly advised before the start of the match by Swedish umpire, Mohamed Lahyani, to mind his language and keep hold of his racket, Kyrgios suffered a code of conduct violation for uttering the word “bulls**t” after losing the third set tie-break.
Meanwhile over on No.2 Court, @NickKyrgios has been up to his old tricks...#Wimbledon pic.twitter.com/DALP3Gdk2m
— Wimbledon (@Wimbledon) June 28, 2016
Afterwards Kygios refused to comment on what Lahyani had said but claimed, “It was not a bad word,” adding at his media conference, “I’m pretty sure we’ve all said it in this room.”
That's a nightmare first round... I could pick 90 guys in the draw that I would rather have played first round
What the warning did achieve was to add venom to the Kyrgios game. He hammered nine aces, broke Stepanek twice and wrapped up the third set in just 26 minutes to complete an excellent performance against a 37-year-old still brimming with guile and first-rate tennis.
Kyrgios called it “a fun match”, pointing out, “We’re great friends, I knew it was going to be tough. To be honest, that’s a nightmare first round for anyone at Wimbledon. I could pick 90 guys in the draw that I would rather have played first round.”
Stepanek, down to 121 in the rankings these days, got into the draw on a wild card as a nod to his years of excellence and was bidding to become, at 37, the oldest man to win a round in a Grand Slam tournament since Jimmy Connors (then aged 40) at the 1992 US Open.
He is wise in the ways of the drop shot, the lob and the punishing volley and the Kyrgios plan was to serve and hit hard and to keep the Czech away from the net.
Thundering down 29 aces, many of them faster than 130 miles an hour, the Australian executed his tactic to near-perfection, even pulling off an inch-perfect lob with a shot played from between his legs, until that lapse as he served for the match at 5-4 in the third set.
Stepanek’s break of serve ensured a tie-break, in which the Czech threw away a 5-2 lead and needed to stave off two match points before prevailing by 11 points to nine. That, and the code warning, might in the not too distant past, have seen the disintegration of Kyrgios.
This time the reverse happened. “That’s where I’ve improved a lot,” he said. “To steady the ship like that, to respond in the fourth set, that’s pretty good.” It was pretty impressive, too.
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