Former Wimbledon finalist Nick Kyrgios said on Friday he \u200dwill not play in the singles competition at this month’s Australian Open as he \u200bis not ready to play five-set matches.<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old, who reached the \u200bquarter-finals of his home Grand Slam in 2015 but has struggled with a series of injuries in recent seasons, will only feature in \u200cthe doubles at the event, which begins at Melbourne Park on January \u200c18.<\/p>\n
Kyrgios<\/a> has fallen to number 670 in the world and would have needed a wildcard to play in the singles.<\/p>\n Tennis Australia (TA) said on Friday Stan Wawrinka had been given a wildcard in what will \u2060be the three-times Grand Slam champion’s last appearance at the tournament before he \u200cretires at the end of the season.<\/p>\n “After some good conversations with TA \u200bI’ve made the call to focus on doubles for this year’s AO,” Australian Kyrgios wrote on social media.<\/p>\n “I’m \u200dfit and back on court, but five-setters are a different beast and I’m not quite ready to go the distance yet.<\/p>\n “This tournament \u200dmeans everything to me, \u200cbut I’d rather give my spot to someone who’s ready to make their moment count.<\/p>\n “It’s all building blocks and I’ll be back next year and pumped to compete. See you out there.”<\/p>\n Kyrgios has \u2060undergone wrist reconstruction and had two knee surgeries since losing in the 2022 Wimbledon final to Novak Djokovic<\/a>.<\/p>\n He lost in straight sets in the opening round of the Brisbane Open by Aleksander Kovacevic<\/a> on Tuesday. Kyrgios won the men’s doubles at the Australian Open in 2022 when he partnered compatriot Thanasi Kokkinakis<\/a> to victory.<\/p>\n Wawrinka, who announced last month he would hang up his racket at the end of 2026, won the first of his three major titles at Melbourne Park and the 40-year-old was delighted \u2060to receive the wildcard.<\/p>\n “Winning the Australian Open in 2014, my \u200cfirst Grand Slam title, is an absolute career highlight for me, so I’m incredibly grateful to receive this wildcard,” he added.<\/p>\n “To have the chance to play the Australian Open at the beginning of my final year on tour means the \u2060world to me.”<\/p>\n Australians Jordan Thompson<\/a> and Chris O’Connell<\/a> also \u200breceived wildcards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Wimbledon finalist Nick Kyrgios said on Friday he \u200dwill not play in the singles competition at this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-360312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}