Hanging out with McEnroe interesting, says Kyrgios

Published by Oscar Andersen

As captain of Team World, John McEnroe (L) guided Nick Kyrgios during the Laver Cup in Prague; Getty Images
Nick Kyrgios has reflected on his time spent with team captain John McEnroe during the recent Laver Cup, saying he’s “a good dude”.

Their short history may be chequered, but Nick Kyrgios believes he and John McEnroe found their time together at the Laver Cup to be valuable.

McEnroe was the captain of Team World of which Kyrgios was part, and coached the Aussie from the sidelines during his matches against Roger Federer and Tomas Berdych.

Before that, their relationship was more fractious.

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McEnroe has been a vocal critic of Kyrgios’ on-court behaviour and perceived lack of effort in matches. Following Kyrgios’ second-round loss to Andreas Seppi at Australian Open 2017, McEnroe, during commentary for ESPN, described the Australian’s performances as “a black eye for the sport”.

This clearly annoyed Kyrgios, who answered “ask Johnny Mac, he knows everything” to several questions during his press conference.

Eight months on, tensions had clearly eased, and Kyrgios reflected on his time with the American legend in a recent article penned for PlayersVoice.

“The chance to hang out with John McEnroe was really interesting,” he said.

“I didn’t ask him about the headlines and the social media stuff in the past. I figured this was a week where I could spend proper time with him and get to know him as a person.

“He’s a good dude. He understands where I come from as a tennis player and he sees similarities with himself when he was a young guy on tour. He helped me out when I was playing Roger and created a great environment. We had some great talks.

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“I feel comfortable around him. There’s a connection. Moving forward, it’s going to be about becoming good mates and someone I can talk to. But not a coach.

“I don’t know if I’d work with him as a coach in the future. That’s nothing against him. It’s just me. I don’t know if I could work with anyone at the moment. He’s been in touch with me a little bit since then and so has his brother, Patrick, because he was the vice-captain. They both said, ‘Whenever you need something they’re a text message away.'”

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