Nick Kyrgios Wants To Retire ‘Gracefully’ And Not ‘Crawling’ Like Rafael Nadal, And You Can’t Blame Him

Nick Kyrgios has no filter. It’s the reason he’s been tabbed the ‘bad boy’ of tennis, and it’s also why every time he says something it divides the tennis world, with people vehemently agreeing with him and others wanting him to be removed from the sport entirely.

His latest comments about retiring, which included him mentioning Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal specifically, are no different.

Kyrgios hasn’t played competitive tennis since 2023 amid injury woes, and retirement is something that he’s openly talked about over the last 12-plus months. The topic came up again during his recent sitdown on ‘The Louis Theroux’ podcast, and in typical fashion, he spoke his mind.

“I look at how Andy Murray’s doing it now, and how Rafael [Nadal] is going out, I don’t want to be like that either. I don’t want to be kind of crawling to the finish line in a sense,” Kyrgios explained. “What Andy Murray’s achieved in this sport is second to basically no-one … unless you are Novak [Djokovic], [Roger] Federer, or Nadal, like, the next person is Andy Murray.”

“It’s like you’ve achieved everything. You deserve to go out, I think, a little bit more gracefully than he’s done. I think that the surgeries, the pain, it’s just not worth it, in my opinion.”

Nick Kyrgios doesn’t want to retire in the same fashion Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray. Mike Frey-USA TODAY Sports

The easily offended and overly dramatic crowd seem to be taking Kyrgios‘ comments as him comparing his own game and career to those of Nadal and Murray. He’s certainly not, because that would be preposterous given their achievements compared to him not having one Grand Slam singles title to his name, yet that hasn’t stopped many from bashing the 29-year-old.

Kyrgios would just like to leave tennis on his own terms, and preferably one piece, which isn’t exactly how Murry and Nadal called it quits.

Murray nearly retired in 2019 after undergoing multiple surgeries on his hip. He never made it past the third round of a Grand Slam after his surgeries as it was no question that his body was never close to 100% on the court leading up to his retirement in August of this year.

Nadal will retire after the Davis Cup next month in Spain, and he’ll be doing so after dealing with multiple injuries during the tail-end of his career that he even referenced during his retirement announcement.

Many would argue that Nadal and Murray should have retired years ago, and nobody would have questioned those decisions at all with their bodies breaking down on the court in real-time, and Kyrgios not wanting to go through those same experiences at the end of his career isn’t controversial in the slightest.