Lost in the Food Chain

Nick Kyrgios is one of the most exciting young players to break out of the ATP pack in a long time. Nick Kyrgios is also the first exciting new player to call a timeout and withdraw from tour play just when his momentum has him poised to break through to the elite level.

Kyrgios, the 19-year-old Australian who upset Rafael Nadal in the fourth round of Wimbledon, was the No. 8 seed this week in Kuala Lumpur. Word is that he went to play there merely to please his Malaysian mother, Nill. It wasn’t particularly good motivation, for Kyrgios was upset by his fellow countryman, Marinko Matosevic.

And that’s it for 2014 for Kyrgios, save a doubles match in Malaysia. He’s pulled out of the other three events he had on his schedule, Tokyo, Stockholm, and Vienna. Three-quarters of the way through his breakout year, Kyrgios is putting a stopper in it, claiming he’s “emotionally spent,” that he just wants “to sit back and take a break from everything.”

Unfortunately for Kyrgios, nobody else will be sitting back and taking a break, and few who found themselves in a comparably choice position at so young an age did either. It’s an unusual and somewhat puzzling decision by this appealing, gregarious young man.

Kyrgios is up to No. 51 in the rankings, and he backed up that upset of Nadal with a few more solid wins at the U.S. Open, where he reached the third round. But it’s not like he’s played himself into exhaustion. He’s played a grand total of nine matches since he beat Nadal, going 5-4, and that includes two Davis Cup rubbers against Uzbekistan. One of those matches was against the severely outclassed Sanjar Fayziev (No. 736), who lost to Kyrgios 6-1, 6-1.

If you include the Challenger and qualifying matches Kyrgios played earlier in the year, his 2014 record is 29-12 on just 41 matches. By contrast, 32-year-old David Ferrer has played 61 matches, and Roberto Bautista Agut has played 56.

Perhaps each and every match Kyrgios played after Wimbledon him through an emotional wringer. But tennis players tend not to be so delicate emotionally—they can’t afford it, because even the best ones lose so often.

Clearly, whatever happened to leave Kyrgios so drained did not take place on a tennis court. That leaves the experience of sudden stardom, and all that came along with his sensational upset of Nadal. Presumably, that has exacted a heavier price than meets the eye, even though it has also paid handsome material rewards.

But if it really is all about the glare of the spotlight and the pressure of expectation, Kyrgios may be in the wrong occupation. Most youngsters in his shoes tend to embrace their newfound status and work double-time to build on it. Kyrgios, though, is backing off. The obvious question: Is it fatigue and confusion, or an instinct for self-preservation of the kind that makes a suspicious wolf gingerly draw back from a trap?

This is something we will have to wait to find out.

Kyrgios’ decision to end his season also may have repercussions in the politics and administration of the game. He is already a drawing card among knowing tennis audiences, so his decision to skip the rest of the year is a severe disappointment to the tournaments he’s abandoning—and thus a blow to the ATP itself, as the organization is not merely a player’s union but a partnership between the players and the tournament promoters. When the tournaments suffer, the tour suffers.

Most everyone agrees that a pro player ought to enjoy a measure of freedom, to play when and where he wants. But the profession is also built on the tacit agreement that players will make good on the obligations they undertake. Up until now, the lure of wealth and fame appears to have been strong enough to add whatever additional motivation gifted youngsters needed to make a big push for stardom at the first opportunity. Let’s take a look at how some other youngsters handled their emergences:

—John McEnroe was just 18 when he made the Wimbledon semifinals (as a qualifier). He played on and went 20-11 after he beat Phil Dent in the quarterfinals.

—Boris Becker won Wimbledon when he was just 17, then played eight tournaments and three Davis Cup ties the rest of the year, culminating with the season-ending Masters (for which he had to qualify). He went 28-7 after winning Wimbledon.

—Roger Federer was 19 when he achieved instant stardom with his upset of Pete Sampras in the fourth round of Wimbledon in 2001. He went on from there to play seven tournaments, logging a 9-7 record.

I suppose Federer is the most relevant comparison; he’s the most recent of these overnight Wimbledon sensations, as well as the one closest in age to Kyrgios. Of course, times change. But they don’t change that much, at least not when it comes to the athletic aspect of the game.

One big difference beyond the physical issues is that, these days, the payout for a star player is enormous, both in prize money and endorsement earnings. As Sampras liked to point out, you can lead an awful nice life if you turn down the call of greatness, content to knock around in the Top 10 until you pop up and win a big tournament in order to keep your place in the food chain. It takes a different breed of cat to vie for domination, to be the guy with adopts a high degree of discipline and accepts the burden of living with “the target on his back.”

In other words, to be a McEnroe, Becker, or Federer.

It may not be fair to compare Kyrgios to those legendary stalwarts. Looking at the post-breakout records of those stars is really instructive that way. Maybe Kyrgios is just a big, happy-go-lucky kid who doesn’t really want that target on his back. Besides, everyone is different. Perhaps Kyrgios really has deeper or more complex needs than other talented youths do, or did. But history shows that the deepest need that great players have is the need to play and to win.

There’s one other possibility here: That Kyrgios wants to work on his game and fill some of the holes in it with the intent to have a big 2015. That’s a risky gambit though. Why let all the momentum go to waste? Like the old saltwater fisherman often says, you never leave fish to find fish.

Right now, Kyrgios isn’t feeling the desire or need to fight and win matches. Thus, he will have to jump start that need pretty quickly when he embarks on the New Year. At that point he’ll have gone three months without playing a competitive match. He will be under a lot of pressure to do well in his homeland come January, without a lot of prep time. And you can bet he will be under even more intense scrutiny than he is now. He’ll probably need all the emotional rest he’s getting over the next few months.