It hasn’t been a bad Wimbledon so far. Just not particularly electrifying. Emma Raducanu was only here for a few days. Serena Williams could only manage a few hours. Roger Federer appeared for 15 minutes and in a suit. Iga Swiatek is out early and the relentless quality of Messrs. Djokovic and Nadal is such that you don’t feel much need to pay attention to them before the final. So many ranked players have received relative nobodys that one of them, 12th-ranked Jelena Ostapenko, completely flipped out in her press conference afterward. “She got lucky,” grumbled Ostapenko, before explaining how she had actually won a match she lost. But no problem, because there is Nick Kyrgios. They might not be the person you want to drive by when you’re blowing a flat on a lonely country road, but they’re a reason to turn on the TV on a weekday morning. Restrictions have been lifted, but Wimbledon Center tickets are still gold dust Thanks to everyone’s best efforts – especially the people who don’t like him – Wimbledon 2022 has happened Nick Kyrgios’ show. Kyrgios understands what many other professionals do not – that success today is not about quality. It’s a matter of content. Content doesn’t have to be good or bad. All the content needs to do is grab your attention and be consistent. This is the new ABC of sales – Always create. Kyrgios understands this. Even when he’s quiet, he’s loud. After beating Brandon Nakashima in five sets, Kyrgios said he had put in a fourth to defeat the American. He used this term – “rope-a-dope”. Even Ali was careful not to overuse it in public. He was coming and going from the field, wearing a red ball cap and red runners, which is a violation of the dress code. When a British journalist glared at him about it – “Are you above the rules?” – Kyrgios picked him up: “Any publicity is good publicity.” Within 24 hours, he was testing his own rule. News has leaked out of Australia that Kyrgios is facing a domestic violence charge brought by an ex-girlfriend. They only play every other day, but for the fourth straight day, Kyrgios was the biggest story. As the cameras panned back to the dressing room after practice, Kyrgios said just one thing: “I feel like I’m in [Netflix’s Michael Jordan documentary] The last Dance.” Something that is. It may not be the most mouth-watering story in Wimbledon history, but it comes close to being the most exciting. On Wednesday, Kyrgios got the perfect opener – two official hours of Elena Rybakina vs Alja Tomlyanovic. After that snoozer, Kyrgios came on and the crowd reacted like it was Ozzy Osbourne holding up some live bats. Last time out, after the shock with Stefanos Tsitsipas, Kyrgios held back. But despite his media woes, he was back to his worst on Wednesday. The current dialogue started almost immediately. The real-time muttering and commentary is very frustrating because while it contains recognizable words, you can’t really follow it. Opponent Christian Garin would only say afterwards: “I didn’t see anything strange.” Well, that depends on what you consider “weird”. If Federer talked to himself the way Kyrgios does, they would have turned his mid-match rants into a book of slam poetry. Down two sets to none, Kyrgios began shouting to himself in a break about the all-white dress code. “Where’s the line?” shout out to anyone and everyone. You or I start yelling at ourselves at work and they say security. This guy is doing it, and broadcasters are debating whether it’s a new kind of meditation. Kyrgios won easily 6-4, 6-3, 7-6 (5). You could tell he had thought hard about what it would be like right after (Always Be Creating). He stared into the distance. He sat down and rubbed his face like he was crying. He was foggy during his on-field comments. “I thought my ship had sailed,” Kyrgios said. “I didn’t do great things at the beginning of my career.” At the beginning?? Immediately after Kyrgios’ victory, a small, revealing thing happened. Raducanu, the golden girl of British tennis, tweeted three characters: “NK” followed by a magic wand emoji. If there’s a group of people who would like to see Kyrgios sidelined as a public figure, it’s not going to be a tennis-led movement. He obviously has important friends. Radukanu simply put the arm of protection around him. Even Kyrgios seemed to understand when asked afterwards. “If she likes watching my tennis, that’s great,” Kyrgios said. Like all great storytellers, he does take liberties with other people’s stories, doesn’t he? As for his big showdown with the media over his criminal charge, it wasn’t too big. Questions on this matter were brushed aside with the old excuse “on the advice of counsel”. He then said a semi-final on Friday against Rafael Nadal “would probably be the most watched match of all time”. Annoying, he might be right. After Nadal won an absolute epic against Taylor Fritz, there was the usual love of interviewers for the elusive Spaniard. The crowd applauded politely throughout. The announcer then told Nadal something he was the last person at the All England Club to know – that he would play Kyrgios in Friday’s semi-final. “Oooooh,” said the crowd, like a bunch of students who had just heard a dirty word. No one ever “played” for the Federer or Novak Djokovic reference. Which is not to say that Kyrgios is their equal as a player, but that he is their superior in terms of making a story happen where there was no story before. I’m not sure it’s a skill, but it’s a skill. Nadal, Federer et al – these are the heroes of tennis. Having finally recognized that he could never be one of them, Kyrgios decided to become the Voldemort of tennis.
