Devastated’ Nick Kyrgios Pulls out of Australian Open with a Knee Injury

Nick Kyrgios‘ withdrawal from the competition due to a knee injury on Monday ended Australia’s chances of having a local male champion win the first Grand Slam of the year.

After making it to the Wimbledon final and the US Open quarterfinals last year, the 27-year-old thought of himself as one of the pre-tournament favorites.

What did he say regarding his withdrawal?

Kyrgios stated that pulling out of his home slam was “pretty brutal.” 

Kyrgios told reporters at Melbourne Park: “I’m devastated obviously. It’s like my home tournament,” 

“Honestly, I’m just exhausted from everything, and obviously pretty brutal. One of the most important tournaments of my career. It hasn’t been easy at all.”

Kyrgios declined to compete in the United Cup team competition and his lone Australian Open warm-up event in Adelaide at the start of the season.

His physiotherapist’s take on his injury 

It made sense for Kyrgios to withdraw from the competition, according to Kyrgios’ physiotherapist Will Maher, because a cyst in his left knee’s meniscus had been hurting him for a few weeks.

“It’s not a significant injury in the sense that it’s going to be career-threatening or anything like that,” Maher added.

“The situation now is we wanted to prevent him from having a further injury or making that injury worse. The prognosis is good and he’ll be fine. We just go back to work and make sure everything is fine for him and we go again.” Maher stated that Kyrgios would undergo joint surgery and believed he would heal in time to compete at the Masters’ tournament at Indian Wells in California in early March.

“Barely had a good night’s sleep the last four, five nights. It’s just been throbbing. … Every time I land on serve or push off my serve, you can see on the side of my knee there’s like a little lump. That lump will eventually just get bigger and bigger,” Kyrgios said. “There’s pressure on my knee (that) obviously hinders my movement. Yeah, the only real way to get rid of it is to open up and then just get rid of it.”

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