Nick Kyrgios is into the Australian Open mixed doubles second round with Leylah Fernandez after the pair survived three match points in their opening clash.<\/p>\n
Nick Kyrgios relished some of the “craziest energy” of his Australian Open career as he and Leylah Fernandez reached the second round of the mixed doubles.<\/p>\n
Nick Kyrgios and Leylah Fernandez won their first round mixed doubles match at the Australian Open.\u00a0Morgan Hancock\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
The pair survived three match points in a brilliant fightback on Friday night, prevailing 6-7 (6-8) 6-4 12-10 over Desirae Krawczyk and Neal Skupski.<\/p>\n
Kyrgios was too banged up to compete in the singles tournament and was punted from the men’s doubles with good mate Thanasi Kokkinakis the previous night.<\/p>\n
But despite sporting bandages on both knees, the 30-year-old showman was in his element alongside Fernandez in front of a boisterous crowd at ANZ Arena.<\/p>\n
“I’ve obviously played some amazing matches at the AO but that’s got to be one of my favourite ones.<\/p>\n
“(We were) 9-6 down, 7-3. Realistically, tennis players don’t always believe you can come back.<\/p>\n
“But I was like, ‘If we just went one at a time, maybe we can do it.’<\/p>\n
“The crowd were amazing all day. They stayed, they hung around and it was amazing. I’m really excited for our next round.”<\/p>\n
Both grand slam singles finalists, Kyrgios and Fernandez can continue to dream of a major mixed doubles title at Melbourne Park.<\/p>\n
They will face either British pair Olivia Nicholls and Henry Patten or Anna Danilina and JJ Tracy in the second round.<\/p>\n
“I felt like Nick was the most positive guy there,” Fernandez said.<\/p>\n
“It was so cool, it was just a lot of fun. Nick brought the great energy and also the crowd.”<\/p>\n
The result derailed American Krawczyk’s bid for a career grand slam in mixed doubles.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old won each of the other three major mixed doubles titles in 2021, and backed up at Wimbledon the following year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nick Kyrgios is into the Australian Open mixed doubles second round with Leylah Fernandez after the pair survived…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-432663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432663","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=432663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}