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<\/p>\nBy Richard Pagliaro | Friday, August 1, 2025
Photo credit: Rob Newell\/CameraSport<\/p>\n
Nick Kyrgios\u2019 next career could see him pushing buttons.<\/p>\n
In an interview at the Esports World Cup 2025, held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, this week, Kyrgios confessed his first sports love was not tennis.<\/p>\n
Instead, he favored gaming and basketball.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cMy passion was basketball and gaming,\u201d said Kyrgios, sporting a black Call of Duty t-shirt during his interview. \u201cTo be thrown into a sport where tennis is very clean cut. You know, I\u2019m very rough around the edges and I didn\u2019t really fit the mold for a tennis player. And I really struggled with that early in my career.\u201d<\/p>\n
The devoted Boston Celtics fans said he\u2019s spent hours playing Fortnite and Call of Duty. Kyrgios said his gaming compulsion often came at the expense of tennis training and tournament play on the ATP Tour.<\/p>\n
The former Australian Open doubles champion said he\u2019s dream of being a professional gamer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would love to be [an esports] player,\u201d Kyrgios said. \u201cI\u2019ve been criticized in my career for not putting enough time on the court. And I\u2019ve missed tournaments and training because I\u2019ve just been gaming purely because I love it and I don\u2019t care.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing about it is like esports continue to grow. You know, it\u2019s always going to evolve, technology\u2019s going to get better, a new game\u2019s going to come out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 2022 Wimbledon finalist shared he dropped \u201cF-Bombs\u201d in front of the Royal Box during his four-set loss to Novak Djokovic, but vowed he\u2019s not going to change his style to fit traditional tennis norms.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd now it seems I\u2019m a bit more embraced. And I\u2019m glad I\u2019m able to put on a show,\u201d Kyrgios said. \u201cYou know, when I played in front of the Royal Box at Wimbledon, I was throwing F-Bombs\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cBut look, it\u2019s been a struggle to kind of fit in. But you know now I kind of embrace it. I\u2019m not going to change for anyone and it took me all the way here, so it paid off.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Richard Pagliaro | Friday, August 1, 2025Photo credit: Rob Newell\/CameraSport Nick Kyrgios\u2019 next career could see him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-54746","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}