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BRISBANE, Australia – Nick Kyrgios is many things.

He’s loved and hated, despised and admired in equal measure. He’s flawed (aren’t we all), and lacks both emotional maturity and a sensitivity chip. He seems perpetually angry, the provenance of which remains somewhat of a mystery.

And the lack of a filter on his oft-flapping gums and itchy social-media thumbs means he can be both thought-provoking and offputting. Sometimes both at once.

But we’re putting everything else Kyrgios is aside here for discussion’s sake, and keeping it to the tennis.

Because the one true, consistent thing about Kyrgios is that he loves tennis.

Of course, sometimes he thinks he hates it, too. Especially the losing. And, for much of his career, the hard work and grinding involved.

Let’s just say that the things Kyrgios loves about tennis, he REALLY loves. And over the last two years, a period during which he played just one match and had an experimental wrist surgery that offered no guarantee he could even return, he missed it.

Fun on the practice court with Opelka

Kyrgios had booked a weekend practice session in Brisbane with 6-foot-11 American Reilly Opelka before he even knew he’d be playing another tall, huge server in the first round of singles.

Opelka, too, has been through it. Like Kyrgios, he was out for two full years because of hip surgery, with just one brief, ill-fated return attempt in the middle of it all.

He finally returned last July in Newport on the grass, and made the semifinals after three three-set wins. Opelka didn’t win back-to-back matches the rest of 2024. But at least he’s back.

Kyrgios shook out his wrist a few times after trying to make contact with some big Opelka deliveries, and lost the practice set 7-5.

But what stood out was the banter.

There’s a canopy over Pat Rafter Arena, which keeps the sound in and makes it reverberate. And Kyrgios speaks … loudly. So it was easy to hear a lot of it.

It was all tennis talk. Technical tennis talk – about Opelka’s variation on serve (true, believe it or not!), the way he can throw his toss straight up and serve wide, or to the right and go T. And how hard it is to predict where he’ll go – and with the big servers, there’s a lot of guesswork involved because the velocity is so hard to catch up to.

“I enjoy still being around tennis. If I didn’t… I obviously commentate, and I’m going to be commentating for a long time. I didn’t have to put myself back in this position of the preparation, the training, the competing, dealing with all the media scrutiny, going out there and putting myself basically in the pressure cooker again. I didn’t have to do that,” Kyrgios said. “I still think I enjoy parts of the sport. That’s why I tried to go through the process, the hard process, of getting back.”

Even during his best years, Kyrgios has always, from a distance, appeared to enjoy the “social” aspect of being on Tour. He was the first player seen practicing with WTA players on a regular basis. When he’d watch a match he’d REALLY watch; the phone use was minimal, and he’d be all in, every point. He’s in his element on a practice court on a sunny day, with a crowd watching.

One year before Wimbledon, when he probably should have been preparing or practicing at the All-England Club, she spent a couple of days in the wilds of the qualifying at Roehampton. He was supporting his friend Tommy Paul, and a fellow Aussie named Akira Santillan who was going through some tough moments.

So it was no surprise to see an eager, enthousiastic, sporting Nick Kyrgios take to the court here in Brisbane, in a long-awaited return.

Competitive tennis, throbbing wrist

By the time he’d barely come out on the short end of a three-tiebreak defeat Tuesday at the hands of the huge-serving Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard – a player who was ranked No. 512 and playing a $25K ITF the week Kyrgios made the Wimbledon final just two years ago, but will be seeded at this year’s Australian Open – there was a fair bit of joy. But a lot of concern.

The wrist was still throbbing after the match, when Kyrgios came into press. He kept adding strips of tape to it during the match, and also complained of a “familiar” pain in his upper arm that you’d think might well be related to compensating for the wrist.

But despite not breaking 200 km/h with his serve, despite playing a kid eight years younger who drops second serves at that speed with a deceptively easy motion, Kyrgios played well. He played within himself; he was contained. He smiled often. He showed his appreciation for his opponent’s good shots (he’s always done this, but it gets lost in the drama).

And that, considering how he felt after the doubles win with Novak Djokovic the previous night.

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“I felt like I had been hit by a bus yesterday after doubles, to be honest. I was on the treatment table for an hour and a half before bed. But we know that’s how it’s going to be,” Kyrgios said. “Even doubles, you just can’t replicate the match pressure, the nervous energy”.

Drawing Mpetshi Perricard was a tough break, in the sense that he couldn’t just ease back into the competitive fray. And just trying to get a racquet on a 225 km/h laser is going to do things even to a healthy wrist.

“Going out there again, playing a top player like that, super confident, even getting aced, I was 4-2 down in the third-set tiebreak, change of ends, and I was still smiling to myself and just, like, ‘We’re right in the heat of the battle’. Where 18 months ago, if you asked me and my physio and my coach that’s here this week, he was feeding me fluffy balls on my wrist. We were not expecting to be here playing again and at such a high level. We were literally a couple of points from winning,” Kyrgios said.

The AO? It’s day-to-day

“I guess for me, it was not even a tennis thing. It was my everyday living was affected from this injury. I couldn’t carry groceries, couldn’t turn a door knob. It got to the point where if I get to play tennis again, it’s just a bonus,” Kygrios said. “I don’t look at it any differently. I’m just not going to take anything for granted. I’m going to go out there and play. It’s literally going to be a day-by-day symptomatic injury moving forward. If I play a long match, jam it the right way, who knows how it’s going to pull up the next day. That’s the type of injury it is,” he said before the tournament began.

The Australian Open, of course, is best-of-five sets. So Kyrgios isn’t promising anything, or even looking ahead to whether he’ll even make the date. There is constant pain in that wrist; Kyrgios managed it fairly well on Tuesday. But it’s a matter of how much he’s willing to take. And, of course, given the speed at which the ball is coming, one false hit, one false move and it’s over.

Beyond that, Kyrgios said the body felt good, the fitness felt good. If there hasn’t been much insight into the amount of work he’s done behind the scenes to prepare for a comeback, it was evident that the effort as significant.

“I used to abuse being youthful in this sport and not doing any cooldown or anything like that, so I guess it’s biting me in the ass right now. I wouldn’t change it. I had a lot of fun when I was a young one,” Kyrgios said. “But now it’s an hour beforehand, hour and a half after, and then it’s — it’s just a constant. We have to do it, otherwise I just won’t be able to play. My entire body now will need physio like every other player, but this wrist alone will probably need an hour, two hours a day on it.”

Reality setting in

Kyrgios said he was really excited to play the Australian Open. But he has more information now after back-to-back matches. And he said it would “take a miracle” for the wrist to hold up in a major. But for Kyrgios, the measure is some sort of mythical deep run more than just winning a round and going from there.

“That’s a best-of-three match with my wrist. Today, if this was a Grand Slam, we may still be out on court, and I don’t know how I’d pull up the next day or the day after. Yeah, that’s kind of the reality setting in,” he said.

Kyrgios is still hoping, intending, to play in Melbourne. Regardless, he will be on hand as a commentator. And he said Tuesday that he also was going to be at Roland Garros regardless, working on the television side.

But he has no tennis plans beyond the Australian summer, although a protected ranking will allow him to play where he wants to – at least for awhile. (It’s odd, isn’t it, that he’s entered with that protected ranking both in Brisbane and Melbourne, when you’d expect those two events would give him wild cards, and not waste those PR opportunities).

He knows there likely aren’t many days left. He doesn’t even know if there’s a tomorrow.

There’s something scary about that, for a guy who always pretended as though he could take or leave tennis and not look back. That was a bluff, a bit of self-protection. But back in the day it was a handy rationale for not playing his best, or for losing his cool, or for failing to leave everything on the table in a quest to be the best he could be. Just in case he failed.

He didn’t want that responsibility, back then. Now, when it’s a matter of how long the twilight is, he might have a better appreciation of what MIGHT have been but isn’t allowing himself the luxury of looking back and playing the “what-if” game. It is what it is.

From the evidence in Brisbane, the 29-year-old is determined to soak up every moment of it, all the while being resigned to the fact that most parts of it aren’t going to be a great time. And that it could end at any moment.

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