It was a business-like effort from Nick Kyrgios in his first round match at the French Open. Kyrgios used his big serve, strong baseline game and unpredictability to take out a tough opponent in Philipp Kohlschreiber in straight sets 6-3, 7-6 (7-4), 6-3.
With his new part time coach Sebastien Grosjean in the crowd along with Australian Davis Cup captain Lleyton Hewitt looking on, Kyrgios fired home 20 aces, 40 winners in all in the match which lasted one hour and 51 minutes. He lost just 13 points on his first serve in his 15 service games. It was a good result for the 18th seed who lost in the opening round in Lyon last week and had been suffering from a hip injury which caused him to pull out of Rome a few weeks ago. He has also been dealing with a right shoulder issue.
“You know, there was a lot of question marks on how I would perform today,” said Kyrgios. “I haven’t had that many matches on the clay. Obviously been struggling physically. Obviously not having matches on the clay and not feeling that confident. I saw the draw and I thought it was going to be very tough. I served really well today at important times in the match, and I thought I just played the right style of game to win today with what I had. Hopefully, I can keep going. ”
Of course it wouldn’t be a Kyrgios encounter without some theatrics. All-be-it minor, the 22 year Aussie did take issue with a pair of line calls with the chair umpire and threw his racquet to the ground after a missed service return.
Fans who filled up the stands on Court 2 may have been disappointed not to see Kyrgios pull out many of his shots from his bag of tricks. However, he did attempt one volley tweener in the sixth game of the second set which proved unsuccessful and he did connect on a very well disguised backhand volley drop shop to give him four set points in the second set tiebreak.
Kyrgios has never reached the second week at Roland-Garros and admitted he doesn’t spend a lot of time on the clay courts if he can help it. “I don’t really like running. That’s one thing. So when the rally gets pretty long I tend to just go for a low-percentage shot. I also don’t like how my shoes get dirty. When I’m back home I don’t really train that much on clay because it makes my cars dirty, too.”
Kyrgios, who has a 19-6 match record in 2017, broke Kohlschreiber twice in the match while defending just three break chances against him.
He will now face South African Kevin Anderson who also won his opening round match in straight sets.
