Nick Kyrgios won’t be accepting John McEnroe’s offer to coach anytime soon after declaring tennis coaches “are overpaid” and that his career is “too far gone” for him to ever appoint another one.
“Personally, I think (hiring a coach) is a little bit of a waste of money ‘cause I think they get paid way too much,” Kyrgios told Elliot Loney in a 45-minute podcast broadcast yesterday.
“And, for me, I don’t have a goal of winning grand slams. I just want to do it my way, have fun with it and just play.
“So to get a coach for me is pointless because I don’t want to waste their time almost.
“I just don’t think a coach is ready – and I’m not going to put them through it too ‘cause it would just be a nightmare.
“Where I’m at my career now, it’s just too far gone, I think for a coach, ‘cause I’m too set in my ways and I just don’t like to listen to advice, to be honest.”
In the conversation, Kyrgios also said he didn’t think he’d ever win a grand slam.
“I don’t believe my body will hold up for seven matches at a grand slam,” he said.
Ad he added that he enjoyed life to the full, and that it wasn’t just about tennis.
“I just want to chill out. I just think the sport’s taken a bit too seriously,” he said.
As a junior many critics said he would not make a career in tennis, and Kyrgios remembers that.
“There were a lot of people who had their two cents about what I had to do to make it, so to speak, and yeah those comments were hurtful at times,” he said.
“I was only a kid. I just wanted to play, go compete, and you’ve got coaches and teachers saying to a kid ‘you need to lose weight, otherwise you’re not going to be good’.
“It was pretty tough to handle back then … I just wanted to prove a lot of people wrong.”
