Australian captain Lleyton Hewitt says a collarbone injury was the reason Nick Kyrgios did not play in the opening singles rubber in Friday’s Davis Cup quarter-final defeat to Canada.
Australia went down 2-1 with the inspirational Vasik Pospisil the hero for the Canadians who will now face Serbia or Russia in the semi-finals on Saturday.
John Peers and Jordan Thompson went down 6-4 6-4 in the decisive doubles rubber, but the biggest talking point of the tie was the shock decision to play John Millman in the opening rubber instead of Kyrgios.
“Nick woke up this morning with a problem. It was with his collarbone and he was unable to play,” Hewitt said.
“John came in and did his best, but we are all very disappointed to be out.”
The 24-year-old Kyrgios had been in brilliant form during the first two ties, hurling down 34 aces and was earlier this week labelled the ultimate team man by captain Hewitt.
Mystery initially surrounded the late scratching with Tennis Australia officials merely saying the 24-year-old had not been nominated.
But Hewitt revealed after the tie that Kyrgios pulled up the morning after beating Belgium’s Steve Darcis on Thursday with the problem.
After being unable to serve at full strength two hours before the match on a practice court, the decision was made to draft in Millman.
“I was expecting to play Nick,” admitted Pospisil.
“I was expecting to play him until the hour before the match, I think it was one hour before when the captains nominate the line-up.
“I was like, ‘Oh well, OK, that’s surprising’. And then I just, you know, digested it for five minutes and then went back to getting my racquets ready.
“You obviously start to change my mentality in terms of how I was going to play the match a little bit because they’re two very different players, polar opposites.”
Millman started well against the huge-serving Pospisil, breaking his serve in the second game of the match.
However, the 29-year-old broke back to level the set at 4-4 and then saved two set points to take a tense tiebreak.
Millman struggled to deal with Pospisil’s power game in the second set and was unable to hold serve at 5-4 down and the Canadian forced an error to seal victory 7-6 (9-7) 6-4.
The admirable Alex de Minaur then levelled the tie at 1-1 after coming from a set down to beat Shapovalov 3-6 6-3 7-5 in a rematch of the 2016 junior Wimbledon final.
But Pospisil, a former All England doubles champion, lifted his young teammate in the decider shortly after his defeat, to seal a fantastic victory.
Injuries to Felix Auger-Aliassime, Brayden Schnur and Milos Raonic have forced the Canadians to field Shapovalov and Pospisil in every match of the tournament.
Peers, who was forced to retire with an elbow injury just one game into the dead rubber against Belgium in the early hours of Thursday morning, was cleared to play.
But after a poor first set, the Aussies broke in the first game of the second set to seize the initiative.
However, Thompson was broken at 4-4 and Pospisil, fittingly, held his nerve to close out the win and leave Australia without a Davis Cup win since 2003.