A first-10-point tiebreaker will be played if they split sets, with court dimensions 9 per cent smaller on Sabalenka’s side, giving Kyrgios less room to land winners.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Aryna Sabalenka is the top female player in the world. (Getty Images: Amadolu\/Artur Widak)<\/p>\n
Both players will be limited to one serve per point.<\/p>\n
Mindful that tennis is littered with women beating men in previous encounters down the years, Kyrgios said he’d be foolish not to be respectful of the Belarusian’s game.<\/p>\n
“Obviously, you’ve got one potentially, I think, one of the greatest of all time women’s players and she’s not even almost close to scratching the surface of what she can achieve,” Australia’s 2022 Wimbledon finalist said.<\/p>\n
“I think she wins multiple more grand slams.<\/p>\n
“She’s honestly been talking a little bit more about this match than I have to be honest, but I’m ready to take the challenge, obviously.<\/p>\n
“I’m going to go out there and, in all honesty, it’s a lot of pressure for me too.<\/p>\n
“The research said that men were not 9 per cent superior, but I guess with the dimensions they are using, it kind of evens it up as much as we can for us to go out there and compete.”<\/p>\n
Asked for a scoreline prediction, Kyrgios was guarded but cited why he would win.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Nick Kyrgios has had to deal with a number of injuries in the past few years. (AP: Lynne Sladky)<\/p>\n
“Look, I’m very confident,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I mean, look there have been 16 people that have ever walked the earth that have beaten the big three and the big four [of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray].<\/p>\n
“So I feel like I’m quite confident, but at the same time I’m very aware she’s dangerous.<\/p>\n
“If I go out there with a smaller court and she gets an early break, then the pressure starts hitting.<\/p>\n
“It’s not just about tennis at that point, and the crowd’s definitely going to be on her side.”<\/p>\n
Stream End Game with Tony Armstrong on ABC iview<\/a><\/p>\n Tony Armstrong tackles Australia’s overdue reckoning with racism in sport with the help of some of its biggest sports stars.<\/p>\n Kyrgios insists there’ll be no repeat of the late-night shenanigans at a Wimbledon village pub the night before facing Rafael Nadal on tennis’s most famous centre-court before he faces Sabalenka.<\/p>\n “No way, no way,” said Kyrgios, who is down to number 652 in the world, having only played six matches in three years due to wrist and knee injuries.<\/p>\n “I’m going to be ready. I’m fairly confident. I feel good about it.”<\/p>\n Ever since Billie-Jean King put a 55-year-old Bobby Riggs in his place in the original Battle of the Sexes in 1973, women’s stars have made a habit of showing up the men in exhibition matches.<\/p>\n Evonne Goolagong Cawley trumped Ilie Nastase two years later, while Australian-born Brit Johanna Konta most recently defeated a 50-something former Wimbledon champion, Pat Cash.<\/p>\n AAP<\/p>\n ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Citing his special place in the tennis history books, Nick Kyrgios is “very confident” of taking care of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267914,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[4909,64,63,24141,963,85,747],"class_list":["post-267913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-aryna-sabalenka","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-battle-of-the-sexes","tag-nick-kyrgios","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n