Federer wants ATP to ‘come down hard’ on Kyrgios

Two-time Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka has suggested that Nick Kyrgios needs to show more “respect” following his comments about Stanislas Wawrinka’s girlfriend. But when he pressed he refused to say if more punishment in addition to the $12.5K in fines for Kyrgios should be in order.

“I’m trying to put it away”, Wawrinka said of the whole incident.

Now, in Greece, if you said in public someone’s sister, or girl friend, or any other woman is, essentially, a – well, you know – you might find yourself in some trouble with the lady’s brothers or any other keepers of the family honor.

Kyrgios apologised to Wawrinka after making the insulting remark in Montreal.

Asked whether she hoped Kyrgios had learned from the incident, she replied: “I hope so”.

A 17-time Major victor, Federer added, “Clearly the behaviour was very disappointing and not great for the sport, one that many players have tried to build up and make it a good image, build up a good image”.

She used to date tennis player Grigor Dimitrov; now Sharapova does. Still, no problem. If Kyrgios keeps on retro-ageing, he’ll soon be expressing himself only by filling his nappy. Oh.

Tennis is essentially based on ethics and respect and what Kyrgios is teaching his legions of young fans is that it’s okay to act like a complete imbecile on court as long as you’re winning – which is a comment I’ve personally read from a 17-year old Kyrgios loyalist.

Kokkinakis was agitated by a pair of call overrules by the umpire in 23-year-old Harrison’s favour, pressing his complaints to annoy the American who railed about these “new age little kids”.

Australian men in the modern tennis era have often been viewed as brats – Mark Philippoussis was a tour playboy and Lleyton Hewitt’s verbal tirade at the U.S. Open during a match with James Blake was seen in some quarters as racist.

Nick Kyrgios has fast become the biggest brat on the tennis circuit with his John McEnroe-like outbursts on court and his eccentricity off it. After the match last week and Kyrgios’s comments on court, Wawrinka apparently confronted Kyrgios in the locker room, and later took to Twitter to condemn the Australian’s conduct and demand that the ATP take punitive action against him.

“It’s pretty well snowballed and gained legs and yesterday Thanasi was playing a qualifying match and the opponent started to give him a lot of lip to the point it got rather unsavory”. If he wants to get into it, I will bury him. “If he’s got a problem, he’s got to say it in private”, Kokkinakis said.

“The way he went about it definitely wasn’t the right thing”.