Rising, and Not Rising, to the Occasion

KEY BISCAYNE, Fla.—So far in his young career, Nick Kyrgios has been a you-never-know-what-you’re-going-to-get kind of guy. He beats Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon, then struggles to win a single match at a low-level event. He plays with fire-breathing aggression one day, then tells you that he can’t stand tennis the next. This year Kyrgios cruised to his first tournament win, in Marseille in February; two weeks later he went AWOL from his country’s first-round Davis Cup tie and was accused by a teammate of pretending to be sick.

On Thursday at the Miami Open, though, it didn’t take long to see which Kyrgios had shown up for his quarterfinal with Milos Raonic. In Raonic’s opening service game, Kyrgios let loose with a forehand that caught the very back of the baseline; a minute later, when he reached break point, he let out a “Come on!” that sent a jolt through the Crandon Park audience, who were just settling into their seats for a pleasant evening’s entertainment. Kyrgios jolted them with another “Come on!” three points later when he battered a backhand return and jumped out to a 1-0 lead.

“I didn’t think I was going to break even once today,” Kyrgios said. “But I came out really energetic and I got a little lucky. He’s got one of the greatest serves in the world ... Even if he tells you where he’s going to serve, it isn’t going to be easy to return it.”

This was a battle between two of the game’s biggest bomb throwers, and it had promised to be a razor-close contest, one that would be decided by just a point or two. But Kyrgios’ early break changed the calculus immediately. He would be the better, more enthusiastic, more tactically savvy, more clutch player from start to finish. While the two players had almost identical stats, from winners to errors to break points to first-serve percentages, Kyrgios won the rallies he needed. He was the one who fended off a break point with an ace in the second set, and fired two more—the first at 136 m.p.h., the second at 134—in the tiebreaker.

Yet according to Kyrgios, it wasn’t his serve that made the difference; it was his return.

“That [early break] definitely set the tone early in the match,” he said. “...I feel as if I’m returning better. That’s the major thing this year. I'm giving myself so many more chances and getting myself into so many more opportunities to take over matches.”

As energized as Kyrgios was on Thursday night, that’s exactly as subdued as Raonic appeared most of the time. He looked to a be step slow to everything, and was unable to counter Kyrgios’ emotion. Raonic did save five of six break points, and he did eventually dominate on his serve in the second set, but he was fortunate that the match wasn’t over more quickly. Raonic’s new attacking game was also mostly ineffective; he finished just 10 of 20 at the net, while Kyrgios was a more efficient seven of eight there. And on match point at 4-6 in the tiebreaker, with a look at a second serve and two serves of his own coming up, Raonic drilled an easy high forehand straight into the middle of the net.

“I think we had a similar amount of chances,” Raonic said in his usual analytically even-keel way. “He made it count more than I did. At the end of the match, he played a better tiebreak than I did. It was not the right two mistakes to make there, at the end of the match, into the net.”

The stat that stuck out to me was first-serve percentage: Raonic’s was 55, Kyrgios’ 57. Nothing world-beating for either guy. But Kyrgios didn’t need his to be higher in the same way that Raonic did. Once the point started, the Aussie had more options—more speed, more spin, more athleticism, more flexibility, more variety from the ground—than the Canadian.

Does Raonic, despite his improvements this year, still live or die with the serve? This match might make you think the answer is yes. And on another level, is he ready to take on the responsibility that comes with being a top player—i.e., the responsibility to consistently beat the players ranked below him? Raonic has spent his career chasing the Federers and Nadals and Djokovics of the world; but being one of those guys means fending off the upstarts, the new guys, the young guns, the Kyrgios’ of the world. Raonic didn’t come out ready to do that on Thursday night.

It was Kyrgios who was prepared to take advantage of a dream draw in Miami; he has had that focus from the start of the tournament, when Nadal and Stan Wawrinka were eliminated from his section of the draw. The Key Biscayne crowd, whatever its previous opinion of Kyrgios, responded to his energy on Thursday.

“I feel as if I’m a lot fitter, stronger, and I just got more experience now,” Kyrgios said. “Last couple of years have been a bit of a roller coaster, but I’ve learned a lot.”

At 20, that roller coaster probably isn’t finished rising and falling for Kyrgios; there will be more scary valleys to come. We’ll see this weekend if he reaches a new peak first.

Victoria Azarenka, a sometime friend of Kyrgios’, appears to be on the verge of reaching a peak of her own. On Thursday, she killed at least two birds with one stone in her 6-2, 7-5 win over Angelique Kerber: Vika put herself one match away from completing a rare Indian Wells-Miami double, and she avenged her only loss of 2016, a quarterfinal defeat to Kerber at the Australian Open that was only made more bitter when the German went on to win her first major title.

But Azarenka says she has learned from that match, and whatever her insights were, she applied them in Miami.

“It was a painful loss in [Melbourne],” Azarenka said, “but I corrected my errors, improved my serve. It’s always a battle [with Kerber]; she got so many balls. I tried to break her rhythm.”

Azarenka and Kerber have developed an entertaining rivalry over the years; there's a thrilling push and pull to their best rallies. You might say that if Serena Williams has challenged Vika to stand up to her and become a better player in the process, Azarenka has challenged Kerber to do the same. Kerber finally did stand up to her in Australia, and the drama in this match was seeing her try to do it again.

After a slow and uncertain start, Kerber—who was nursing an injured thigh—was a point or two away from launching this one into classic territory, but she couldn’t quite win the point she needed. Azarenka nearly tripped at the finish line, double faulting three times when she served for the match at 5-4 in the second set. But she came right back to win the last two games. The same dynamic had played out earlier in the set: Azarenka had been broken at 3-2, and she appeared ready to collapse; instead, she won eight straight points with a handful of brilliant winners.

“I’m glad I stayed strong,” Vika said.

Those eight points were the old Azarenka, the great Azarenka, the No. 1 Azarenka. Kerber took up her challenge and beat her in Melbourne. Now Vika, the way champions are supposed to do, has taken up hers.

Images by Anita Aguilar/TENNIS.com