Kyrgios wants to “turn the narrative around”
Australian tennis player Nick Kyrgios has been “winning a lot lately”, but it wasn’t an easy journey for him to get where he is now.
Nick Kyrgios has been open about his mental health struggles for a while now. The Australian tennis star has seen a lot of success recently, and he attributes that to overcoming a lot of those struggles.
Kyrgios reached the Wimbledon final in July and won the Citi Open title in Washington in August, and now, has just beaten top seed Daniil Medvedev in the US Open. He went on a nine-match winning streak leading up to the US Open.
“Obviously winning helps,” said Kyrgios. “I’ve been winning a lot this year. The motivation has been there. It’s easy to train, it’s easier to wake up obviously when things are going great.”
Of course, things aren’t as easy when winning isn’t so frequent. Likewise, it’s hard to perform well when you’re not feeling well, whether that be physically or mentally. In Kyrgios’ case, it has been a mental struggle recently.
“I feel like I’m more just proud of the way that I’ve bounced back after everything, honestly,” Kyrgios said. “I’ve been in some really tough situations mentally, and in some really scary places.”
He said that what’s motivated him most has been the desire to make people proud. He said he felt like he was letting people down and “feeling sorry” for himself. “And I didn’t want to do that anymore,” he said.
“That’s basically it. I just was feeling so depressed all the time, so feeling sorry for myself. I just wanted to change that.”