Last hurrah? Kyrgios unlikely to play singles at Australian Open again after loss to Scottish battler

Because of various ailments, he has done little of either for a long time. He’s become the star tennis player who doesn’t play much tennis.

Kyrgios looked rusty and sore; who would have thought? However sore he was in his recently stirred up abdomen, he was sick to the stomach.

Fearnley, looked like a man who had been playing continuously for the last year, albeit at lower levels, and has only recently forced his way into the top 100. He is what Kyrgios patently is not: fast rising.

Until now, the most famous Fearnley from the UK was cricket bat maker Duncan. This one packs a wallop, too.

Two sets and a break down, funky old Kyrgios momentarily reasserted himself, seemingly disorienting Fearnley and certainly triggering the hitherto hushed crowd.

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His comeback got as far as a set point, but Fearnley saved it and steadied to dominate the tie-break.

Really, this was Australia’s most talented tennis player against an unknown in the first round of a major, so it should have been a doddle.

But it was also Australia’s most enigmatic and contrary tennis player in only his third match in two years in any tournament, against a US-based Scotsman whose game was like his accent, not quite what you’d expect.

It was Kyrgios who was flummoxed.

The occasion fell flat. The truth is that there are no blockbusters in the first couple of rounds of a major.

By definition, it pitches stars against nobodies, or middle-ranked players against one another.

It means that there are sometimes upsets – there was a big one on Monday – but no true blockbusters. That means they have to be manufactured.

So it was that Fearnley had to play a pat role: he was the obscure outsider who, for our purposes, had to be transformed into the ogre-like dangerman who our Nick bravely had to face down.

If you dispute that Fearnley was obscure, know that Nine commentator Todd Woodbridge at one point called him Kurt.

Kyrgios probably spent more money on a car last year than Fearnley’s career winnings. The trouble was that Fearnley truly was a giant killer.

The bad signs showed up early. Before the first set was done, Kyrgios was muttering and gesticulating at his cornermen, now in a courtside pod for added ire.

In the second, he was twice treated at change of ends for the abdomen strain that limited his preparation this week.

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Fearnley matched Kyrgios serve for serve and revealed a well machined backcourt game. He controlled the first-set tie-breaker, then made an early break in the second set and consolidated it.

At 3-1 up in the third, the show was in all ways over. Simply, Kyrgios produced nothing for the crowd to return to him in the way of ferment. He did hit one-tweener, a half-volley, but Fearnley, far from, thrown, chased it down and passed Kyrgios with a backhand. The normally boisterous JCA crowd did not get much beyond a few random ois.

Suddenly, Fearnley tightened, Kyrgios broke back and underscored his ascendancy in the next game with a bit of Kyrgiosity when he won one point with an underarm serve followed by a shot played behind his back, triggering the crowd and changing the mood of the meeting.

Fearnley had expected this, but could do nought about it.

Kyrgois of old might have ridden this momentum to a famous win. But this was old Kyrgios, creaking from inaction. For most of the match, rust would have gleamed beside him.

Without much further ado, Fearnley closed the deal.

So what now for Kyrgios?

This, after two virtually blank years, more downtime. One thing won’t change. The peculiar thing is that the less he’s played, the more attention he’s paid. Whether sought or attracted, it’s fact.

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Sometimes it’s sympathetic, sometimes it’s appalled, but it’s Kyrgiois. Fame and infamy are one and the same now, the trade-weighted currency of the times.

His profile is what it is. But what he desperately needs now is matches, ranking points and – believe it or not – confidence in himself.

Kyrgios has the show, but at his home major it has never really firmed into substance. Apart from the year he and Thannasi Kokkinakis conned everyone that doubles was now the very thing, it’s been a hapless hunting ground.

If he did contest the Open next year, he’d be the other side of 30. To him, it now looks a bridge too far.

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