Tennis star Nick Kyrgios is annoyed by some old stars in the tennis world. He believes that they can no longer keep up with the big boys these days.
It is a popular game, the sport is actually any. The comparison between the old, often legendary generation with the younger, usually more athletic upstarts. Often garnished with the question: Would XY still be able to dominate and keep up today?
Tennis is no exception. A representative from the camp “No no, the old guard would no longer dominate today” is Nick Kyrgios.
He shared his thoughts on this topic in a recent interview with The Athletic.
Kyrgios: What are you talking about?
In particular, the ex-professionals who now analyze games on TV often bother him. “Sometimes it’s hard to watch these old heads dissect the game over and over again for new fans. Some of what they say doesn’t make sense. Jim Courier is really good the way he puts things, but at Some of these other people I’m like, ‘What are you talking about? How do you know that?'”
He rejects the idea that stars from earlier times can keep up in the hyper-athletic modern era. He doesn’t exclude big names either.
“The game was so slow back then,” he said. “I saw Boris Becker and I’m not saying they weren’t good in their time, but to say they would be just as good today is absurd,” Kyrgios continued. “A good serve back then had a speed of 197 to 200 km per hour. People like me consistently hit 220 km/h into the corners. That’s a completely different game.”
Djokovic would eat you up
He doesn’t want to say that the old guard hasn’t made its way today either. “But to play serve-and-volley you have to serve 220 km/h, because if you serve less than 220 km/h Djokovic will eat you up. He’ll eat you alive. Lleyton Hewitt has Sampras in a year destroyed at the US Open. This was the first prototype of someone who could return serve.
“He made Sampras look pretty shitty. And what would Djokovic do with someone like Sampras? It would be a cleanup. If Hewitt did it, Djokovic would destroy him. He would eat him alive.”
Kyrgios himself is currently sitting out due to injury problems and also canceled his home game at the Australian Open. He’s planning a comeback “sometime next year.”