LONDON // He has been invited to train with Roger Federer, picked out as a star of the future by Andy Murray, and now Nick Kyrgios has made his first mark on Wimbledon.
Teenagers in the top 100 of men’s tennis are as rare these days as hairs out of place on Federer’s head.
Australian Kyrgios, 19, is not there yet, but at 144th this young man in a hurry is the closest teenager there is.
His progress has certainly not gone unnoticed by the those at the top, with Kyrgios travelling to Zurich before the French Open to hit with Federer for a week.
“It’s very exciting,” he said. “Roger’s the greatest of all time and to have someone like that looking over and checking you out, it’s a bit of pressure as well, but it’s motivation to keep working hard and to keep trying to get these good results and hopefully one day take him on as well.
“I don’t know if I’d be able to perform playing Rog any time soon. I’d be admiring him too much. But we played a couple of sets in the training week, so I think I’d be pretty confident.
“There’s obviously signs that I can do something special in the sport. I’ve just got to keep my head down.”
Kyrgios found out he had been given a wild card into Wimbledon after winning the Challenger title in Nottingham last weekend – his third title on the second-tier circuit this season.
That prompted Andy Murray to tweet: “Another challenger win for @nickkyrgios this time on grass.. also won challengers on hard and clay! Next big aussie star.
“We will be seeing a lot of him very shortly on the main tour.”
Kyrgios made his breakthrough as an 18 year old last year when, as a wild card, he beat Radek Stepanek in the first round of the French Open.
In January, he also won a round on home soil at the Australian Open and led Benoit Paire by two sets to love before cramp got the better of him.
Kyrgios has climbed a remarkable 700 places in the rankings since the start of 2013 and will climb further after beating veteran Frenchman Stephane Robert in four sets at Wimbledon on Wednesday.
It was a real battle of the generations, with 15 years separating the pair, but it was Kyrgios, a confident crowd-pleaser, who held his nerve better in the end.
“I was pretty confident,” he said. “I knew if I played my game, it was going to be on my terms.
“I went out there, he started being aggressive. But I was really confident. At two sets up I thought I had an opportunity to win it in straight sets, but sometimes that’s the way it’s going to go.
“My serve’s my main strength, and especially on the grass it’s going to help me a lot. That got me over the line.
“When I won it was excitement and a bit of relief as well. It could have gone to a fifth set easily. A mixture of emotions, but it was a dream come true to win my first ever Wimbledon at 19. I think it’s a pretty good achievement.”
Kyrgios could not be more different to Bernard Tomic, the Aussie wild child who he looks set to overtake as the successor to Lleyton Hewitt.
Encouragingly for Australia, Kyrgios is not alone, with fellow young guns Thanasi Kokkinakis, Luke Saville, Jordan Thompson, Benjamin Mitchell and Jason Kubler all making strides.
Kyrgios said: “It’s really good that we’re all pushing now. There’s about five or six of us and I think we can help each other, push each other in training.
“We’re all good mates as well so we’re not so competitive – we are, but we’re not. There were a couple of Aussie guys out there watching my match and I think it’s a really good culture that we have.”
Follow our sports coverage on twitter at @SprtNationalUAE