A Sport Psychology Coach Perspective on Nick Kyrgios

The Men’s Wimbledon final was a must see two Sundays ago with Djokovic and Kyrgios battling for the “W.” Djokovic raised his career haul to 21 major trophies surpassing Federer and falling one behind Rafa. And yet, the news surrounds the Aussie and his behavior on court.

As a sport psychology coach, I watch Kyrgios with a different lens. My sport psychology background allows me the opportunity to see his behaviors in many different ways. First and foremost, to make assumptions based off of what we see while he plays and what we read in articles is unrealistic. We don’t know what goes on in his life other than performing tennis.

In writing this blog, I wanted to play devil’s advocate to all the other stories about Kyrgios.

Perfectionism. Perfectionism primarily comes from internal pressures. Most of us recognize perfectionism as someone who overly self-critical, shrugs off accomplishments, doesn’t celebrate the wins, and is hard at work with 80-hour weeks. We see some of these tendencies from Kyrgios on court – yelling at himself, his box, the officials, and crowd or shrugging off the Wimbledon final.

Some may argue... No way he is a perfectionist! He does not have a coach. He does not practice a lot. He doesn’t seem to care.

We don’t recognize another side of perfectionism – laziness, procrastination, desire to avoid failure. I wonder if his actions on court and choices for training come from the desire to avoid failure. If you’ve got nothing to lose there is less pressure to succeed and fail.

From my experience, perfectionism is common in tennis athletes. In addition, greater professional competition has been thought to play a role in perfectionism. Do I believe his actions on court are excusable? Not at all. And I also believe we, the people, watching can do a better job at considering there is more to professional athletes’ lives than the sport. As the saying goes “You never know what people are going through. Be kind. Always.”

Try to be open in looking through this lens.