Nick Kyrgios’s apparent indifference to tennis’ Asian swing has played out accordingly on court, the Australian making a straight sets departure in the opening round of the Zhuhai Championships on Wednesday.
The sixth seed bowed out 7-6 (7-5) 6-1 to veteran Italian Andreas Seppi in just one hour and five minutes.
After finding some of his mojo at the Laver Cup – where he pushed Roger Federer to a super tiebreaker in their singles clash and won a doubles contest with Jack Sock against Rafael Nadal and Stefanos Tsitsipas – Kyrgios withdrew from his remaining matches.
Quizzed about his plans after the Laver Cup, he told journalists drolly: “I mean, I got the very important Asia swing. Don’t want to miss that.”
He turned up early against Seppi, racing out to a 5-2 lead and holding three set points on serve in the opening set at 5-3.
But a series of loose shots saw him squander that advantage, and while he picked up another game to push the set to a tiebreak the world No.27 lost it 7-5.
With apparent shoulder issues and the loss of his opening service game of the second set, Kyrgios quickly loss interest and the match.
The 24 year-old is still awaiting word from the ATP about a possible suspension over his behaviour at the Cincinnati Masters during a match against Karen Khachanov and subsequent comment that tennis’s ruling body was “pretty corrupt.
Meanwhile on Tuesday Alex de Minaur swept past fellow Australian John Millman to secure a second-round showdown with former world No.1 Andy Murray at
De Minaur took just 70 minutes to win 6-1 6-3 and now faces five-time Australian Open runner-up Murray, who claimed his first ATP Tour singles victory since January by beating Tennys Sandgren in the opening round.
Other early winners on Wednesday included Albert Ramos-Vinolas and qualifier Soonwoo Kwon, a surprise victor over fifth seed Lucas Pouille.