At Peace with Playing One or Two More Years

By Richard Pagliaro | @Tennis_Now | Monday, December 11, 2023
  
Nick Kyrgios concedes he’s had a long love-hate relationship with tennis.

These days, Kyrgios says he’s in a positive place and at peace with closing the curtain on his competitive career in a couple years.

Nadal: Ready to Face Fears and Doubts

The 28-year-old Kyrgios talks stardom, haters, overcoming suicidal thoughts and tennis future in new episode of the On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast.

Kyrgios, who will miss next month’s Australian Open continuing his recovery from knee surgery, said he plans to step away from the sport in a couple of years.

“I’ve kind of come to peace with, I only wanna play for about another one to two years and, and be at the top and, and go down my own terms,” Kyrgios told Jay Shetty. “Like I would hate to have another surgery or anything like that. So I think I’ve still got the ability to have a good one to two years and then that’s it.

“I think I’ll be at peace with everything I’ve achieved and, you’re right. I’m gonna have to just say, look to everyone out there who wants me to play more. You’re just gonna have to be okay with me not playing anymore.”

In a wide-ranging interview, Kyrgios reveals his past battles with suicidal thoughts—he shares he contemplated suicide standing on his Acapulco hotel balcony in 2019—was driven to self-harming by his depression and social media criticism and once spent time in the psychiatric ward of a London hospital during Wimbledon.

“I was drinking every night. You know, just at the time I thought it was just fun, but it wasn’t fun. It was just self inflicted pain,” Kyrgios told Jay Shetty. “And I had friends around me telling me it wasn’t healthy and I ignored them. And then I found myself going to a psychiatric ward in London and I had to play an Nadal the next day.

“Everyone would assume that I was doing fine. I was answering questions and they told me that I should stay in this psychiatric ward for two weeks and be reassessed. And I was playing Nadal the next day. It’s like, I looked at myself. I was like, I can’t do this. I have to somehow change these habits.

“So I had self harm everywhere. I had to wear an arm sleeve on the center court of Wimbledon and no one knew any of these problems. And it was, it was hard. And I look back and I just don’t know how I like got out of it to be honest, I was such a mess. And the worst thing was the media, I was having decent results during that time. And the media was like, okay,…