Strained Tie: Tomic, Kyrgios exchange shots after Aussie Davis Cup defeat

Thank you, Australia, for the boundless amusement that your slang provides. This week: "chucked a sickie." As in, "Nick Kyrgios was accused of chucking a sickie."

Bernard Tomic witnessed nearly 50 aces that John Isner hurled down on him to clinch this weekend's Davis Cup tie, 3-1, for the Americans. Mid-match, though, during a medical timeout, Tomic turned his frustration on his sometimes-teammate, Nick Kyrgios. Absent from the tie due to reported illness, Kyrgios got a long-distance earful from his compatriot. "Two times. Two times he's faked it," Tomic said courtside, as picked up by a nearby microphone. "Two times Nick has faked it. Twice. While I'm here, Nick's sitting down in, uh, Canberra.

Bulls — he's sick."

Tomic was still stewing about Kyrgios missing in action after the decider, telling the assembled press, "If [Kyrgios] plays Indian Wells then, uh, he's definitely lost a little bit of my respect." Notably, he fired that verbal shot with the Aussie squad's captain (and spontaneous-teammate) Lleyton Hewitt sitting just to his right.

Never one to take a public comment lying down—or sitting down, as Tomic would have it—Kyrgios fired off a pair of tweets in reply, notably saying, "Just don't expect me to have your back anytime soon." He didn't name Tomic in the posts, but conclusions can be drawn readily.

Kyrgios also reportedly tweeted a post that chided Tomic for his tour-record 28-minutes-short loss to Jarkko Nieminen in 2014. He later removed the post.

Tomic made more than one allusion to the tension in his post-tie presser, also saying about his own injury, "I wasn't going to pull out or nothing, wasn't going to do it in Davis Cup, wasn't going to do it when I'm playing for my country."

Fellow Aussies think the twenty-something pair will improve relations moving forward, as it's not the first time they've seen strained. "They'll sort it out once they see each other," Davis Cup teammate John Peers was quoted as saying after the fact.

The BNP Paribas Open awaits, and with that, a chance at reconciliation. To that end, maybe the two can take a page out of Venus and Serena Williams' Indian Wells playbook.

Follow Jon on Twitter @jonscott9.