Nick Kyrgios faces reality check with crushing Australian Open 1R loss

Nick Kyrgios returned to the Grand Slam circuit today for the first time since the 2023 US Open. It was a match against rising talent Jacob Fearnley from the United Kingdom who famously took a set off Novak Djokovic at last year’s Wimbledon.

Fearnley is a college player who had a breakthrough last year making a couple of deep runs at the Challenger level. He’s not the youngest among talents but he’s got the skillset to be a really good player really soon.

All of that talent was shown in this match against Kyrgios who obviously isn’t a very easy player to play. The Aussie showed a bit of rust, showed that he’s missing matches on this level but he was at home and the crowd was heavily backing him.

Set 1

The opening set went kind of expectedly. Neither of these players are known to prefer to play long rallies. Fearnley is a player who has a massive serve and likes to play snappy behind it. He was able to do that in the opening set hitting 9 aces and dropping only 3 points behind his opening serve. Kyrgios himself looking to shorten the rallies certainly helped in that regard.

On his own serve the Australian struggled to dominate as much though he was still able to cruise through it without suffering a break. He hit 5 aces but allowed two break points, which he both saved. Ultimately it was a tiebreak which concluded things and Fearnley won it because he was a bit more patient.

The stats paint a clear as well. Fearnley had 15 winners and only six unforced errors compared to Kyrgios having 13 winners and 11 unforced errors. It was just a bit too much from Nick in the opening set.

Set 2

The second set didn’t bring any sort of change for Kyrgios who looked quite a bit worse in this one. He was very nervous ranting to his box all the time as well as touching his abdominal area. After a while, it became clear that he was feeling some sort of discomfort as he called a medical timeout as well.

Fearnley was already up a break by the time that happened as he was simply dominating the match. He barely lost any points on his serve by then while Kyrgios massively struggled. He was sailing balls wide and also struggled to serve as well, totaling a couple of break points.

He did continue to play on even though it was apparent that he wasn't playing close to his best and was heading to a pretty straightforward defeat. Fearnley finished off the second set 6-3 behind 3 more aces, 12 more winners and only 6 unforced errors. Fearnley lost 3 points on his serve in total in that second set.

Nick Kyrgios continued despite injury troubles in Australian Open 1R - Set 3

2025 Australian Open - Day 2 - Source: Getty

Kyrgios also continued to play on in the 3rd set despite the problems, but it didn’t really work out all too well for him. He once again ran into problems pretty early on, getting broken in the 3rd game of the match.

From there, it seemed like Fearnley would be able to hold serve without problems, but he didn't as Kyrgios broke back to prolong the match a bit longer. It was the first time that Fearnley was broken as the crowd went nuts. That spurted quite a bit of inspired play from Kyrgios, who was seemingly determined not to bow out after three sets. He kept pushing, but Fearnley held for the 5-5 score.

The set would end up in a tiebreak after Kyrgios found some good tennis. This set was by far the best he's played all day, but he still wasn't able to win it. Fearnley held firm to finish it off 7-3, avoiding having to play another set with a surging Kyrgios. The Brit played superbly well and deserved the win. He finished the match with 17 aces, 46 winners, and only 26 unforced errors with the final score being 7-6(4) 6-3 7-6(2).