Nick Kyrgios saw his tennis retirement flash before his eyes with details of his wrist injury, only to make a miraculous recovery.
Kyrgios, a polarizing figure in tennis, spent the last year and a half dealing with injuries, first a knee issue and then a debilitating wrist condition.
After playing just one match in the 2023 season, resulting in a loss to Yibing Wu in Stuttgart, Kyrgios turned to podcasting and commentary.
The Australian tennis star launched his own podcast, Good Trouble with Nick Kyrgios, where he interviews individuals who live life on their own terms.
Kyrgios also worked as a tennis analyst and commentator with Tennis Channel and Eurosport, covering events like the ATP Finals and the Australian Open.
Now, as Kyrgios prepares for his tennis comeback on the hard courts of North America in late July, his journey will inspire many who doubted him.
“This has been a really challenging time – the hardest of my career. People aren’t expecting me to come back, especially after an injury like this, so I would love to do that and play again.”
Kyrgios’s determination to return to the sport goes against the belief that he lacks interest in his professional career. He described the recovery process as brutal but now feels surreal to be back on the court hitting tennis balls.
“The process has honestly been brutal. The surgery was almost 10 months ago, and it’s not a very common injury, so we are experimenting how much we can push it. No-one has really come back from an injury like this before. To now, being back on court, it’s pretty surreal.”
Kyrgios suffered from scapholunate ligament damage on his wrist, a rare condition in tennis. Dr. Michael Sandow, one of the world’s top surgeons, was surprised by the successful outcome of Kyrgios’s wrist surgery.
“He had very nasty wrist instability with a tear that can create significant wrist bone collapse and leads inevitably to arthritis. He was quite disabled when I first saw him. All he wanted to do was feed himself and do light activities, and the Anatomical front and back (ANAFAB) reconstruction was to be the solution.”
“Nick’s now playing tennis again. If you talk to anyone in the wrist specialist world they would be quite amazed. You just don’t get these results.”
