John McEnroe says he has reached out to Nick Kyrgios numerous times to offer his help but the Australian has always rejected the opportunity.
McEnroe has been Kyrgios’ Laver Cup captain before on Team World, and the two players are very reminiscent of each other in their fiery tempers on court.
Kyrgios, though, has always maintained he is not interested in getting outside help, saying he does not want to be answerable to anyone with regard to his tennis. That, though, hasn’t stopped McEnroe from trying.
“I get a lot of what’s going on here more than most people,” McEnroe told BBC Radio 5 Live.
“He’s a good kid, the players like him, he’s well liked in the locker room, he does a lot of charity work. But he’s got demons you know, in a way – we all have this fear of failure and it’s a question of how you best deal with it.”
“It’s unbelievable so he moves the needle for us in tennis. We need this big time, but we don’t need him to try half the time. Who should coach Nick Kyrgios? John McEnroe of course but he’s untouchable.
“Anyway the guy doesn’t need the coach, the guy is a genius out there the way he plays. He needs Sigmund Freud to come out of the grave and somehow figure out a way to keep this guy going for a couple of years because we could use him.”
Nick Kyrgios is one of those rare players on a tennis court that he is a spectacle whether he is winning or losing.
The losing is usually accompanied, as it was in the Wimbledon final, by him ranting and raving at himself or his box. McEnroe, though, does not see anything controversial in that – he sees a tortured soul.
“You know he’s sitting there and he’s obviously tortured in certain ways. [He’s] unbelievably talented, very smart.
“[He’s] a hell of a player when he wants to be and so you want to nurture that in a way as an ex-player, as a father, as a fan, as a commentator, so I can relate a lot.”
More must-reads: