Alex Corretja believes Nick Kyrgios will be a dangerous opponent for any seeded player he faces at Wimbledon this summer.
Kyrgios skipped the clay-court season to prepare for the grass campaign and will enter Wimbledon as an unseeded player. Last week, Kyrgios beat Stefanos Tsitsipas and Pablo Carreno Busta to reach the Halle Open semi-finals, but lost 4-6 7-6 (7-2) 7-6 (7-4) to Hubert Hurkacz. The week before, he lost at the same stage at the Stuttgart Open to Andy Murray 7-6(5) 6-2.
With the 27-year-old’s preparations going well, Eurosport tennis analyst Corretja believes Kyrgios – who said last week he thinks he is a “top five or top 10 player” on grass – can make a deep run at Wimbledon this year on his favourite service.
“If I would be in the Wimbledon draw and I would be seeded, I would pray not to play Kyrgios in the first rounds,” the Spaniard said.
“It’s so difficult to play against him, his serve is probably one of the best on tour right now.
“He knows that he loves to play on grass, he likes to have fun, he likes to get the crowd involved. I think he’s playing with less pressure.
“I feel like he’s just playing to see what will happen, and he loves the conditions, he loves the surface. So I think if he’s got a place in the draw where the seeds are ones that he can dictate and that he’s the one dealing and dominating, he can be dangerous.
“In another moment, I feel like he was not probably ready, like when you see him in the Australian Open or US Open, because the matches are longer, but in Wimbledon they can be long, but he can make quick points.
“He can put pressure with the return as well, with the forehand, with the backhand flat. Well, I think Kyrgios is someone that you don’t want to really see next to you in the draw.”
Corretja thinks the world No. 45 will need to maintain a high level of consistency if he is to reach the second week of SW19. Kyrgios has never gone beyond the quarter-final stage which he achieved in 2014.
“He needs to find his rhythm and having fun is great,” Corretja said.
“But he needs to show that he’s capable of playing seven matches, best-of-five, not only physically, mentally, to be consistent.
“Is he capable of doing that? Well at some point, this is the kind of player that you never know what can happen with him.
“If he’s inspired by the feeling like he’s playing well and the crowd might love the way he plays because he’s an absolutely different kind of player, it can be so annoying for the opponent.
“Physically, If you would beat him, you would try to win the easiest you can in the first few rounds. And if you beat the opponents, you would like to see him struggling from the very first day so that when he gets to the fourth round or quarter-finals, he will be very tired or mentally already exhausted, because you need to think that maybe he was not too used to doing that.
“But grass is a little bit different, and from the matches he played the last few weeks, you can see that he is already getting the rhythm that he was missing during the clay court season.
“So no doubt that Kyrgios is going to beat some of the guys – he is going to be such a dangerous guy to play.”
