Nick Kyrgios has had some incredible moments in his tennis career thus far, but the one that eludes him, and many others featuring in an era dominated by just three men, is a Grand Slam title.
He is not alone in enduring this vacancy in his trophy cabinet, with some truly exceptional tennis players having been constantly thwarted by ‘the big three’ for decades now.
However, with their influence in the contemporary game seemingly waning, opportunities are arising for others to step up and dominate the power vacuum.
Thus far it has largely been Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz and Daniil Medvedev who have done so.
But when Kyrgios is back from injury, he will have aspirations of joining that crew.
Nick Kyrgios reveals how he left all of the Big Three stunned
Speaking on his podcast, Hana Kuma’s Good Trouble, with Naomi Osaka as the guest, the two spoke about everything from their respective hiatus’ from the sport to the biggest moments of their careers thus far.
And on that latter topic, the 26-year-old’s wins over Serena and Venus Williams naturally came up.
However, not to be outdone, Kyrgios sought to empathise with such legendary victories, detailing the times he got one over against Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer.
Laughing, the Australian suggested that the trio, widely regarded as the three best men’s tennis players of all time, would all have been thinking the same thing after losing to him.
He noted: ‘Yeah well I never thought… I don’t think Federer, Djokovic or Nadal ever thought they’d lose to me, so I think they look back and think: ‘How the hell did we lose to him?’.
‘Beating Rafa I was ranked like 150 in the world and he was world number one at Wimbledon and it kind of just happened, then it gave me this belief that I was a kid from Canberra. I almost wanted to show everyone that you could do it, you could just get there and rattle the scene a little bit and beat the best in the world.
‘No one can take away those wins. If you look at those three players, they’re the greatest of all time, with Serena and Venus, and to say that we’ve had a little moment in history where we’ve got the better of them on a certain day in tennis is pretty cool.’
Nick Kyrgios has always been capable of the spectacular
To see Kyrgios boast wins against all three of these legendary figures comes as no surprise.
After all, his career has always been one laden with upsets, with his tricky and unorthodox play style making him a supremely awkward challenge for even the best of players to bypass.
If his mental state is secure, which even he has admitted over the years that it hasn’t been, it often felt like there were few who could match his talent.
However, with injuries having scuppered the last two years of his career, we as fans have been deprived of that.
Hopefully, he can return soon to start unsettling this latest set of superstars, with his task made much easier given Federer’s retirement and the apparent decline of Nadal and Djokovic.
Should he return to full fitness, these young upstarts likely won’t know what hit them when Kyrgios is back.
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