Kyrgios’ Wimbledon final adventure

Kyrgios is arguably the most instinctually talented player on the professional tennis circuit.

When able to stay in charge of his game, he demonstrated over and over again, he could beat anyone.

But for great natural instinct to translate to enduring success, it must be accompanied by adequate execution of the shots on a regular basis.

For that the player must be fit, well prepared and able to give his undivided attention to every ball played.

As Federer has remarked – success at the top of tennis requires ten per cent genius and ninety per cent hard yakka.

Kyrgios' Achilles hill shows when he begins to lose points.

Then he finds himself having two opponents: one, on the other side of the court, but the other, on his side: his negative shadow.

His disintegration, often ending up in painful self-implosion, typically starts with his frustrated waving his head, from side to side.

This is the beginning of his negative shadow entering the court and often progressively taking charge of his game away from his instinctual genius.

This disapproving head movement tends to continue even when he scores beautifully, as if waving a finger at him: 'Hey, you are not off the hook!'

Soon audible negative self-talk follows, getting louder and louder, with this distraction occupying more and more of his attention away from the ball he is supposed to play.

This is an incredibly painful process even to watch as he, step by step, saps his own energy through self-division.

Having worked as a psychotherapist for over thirty years, I have learnt that there is nothing more destructive to people's self esteem and good performance than negative self-talk.

The trigger for it tends to be stress, which can gradually turn into deep distress.

When the confidence is lost in the process, to regain it is very hard.

To do so, requires a mind-reset.

Djokovic is an accomplished master of such positive reset.

I watched him several times losing his first two sets at Grand Slams, then, having taken a toilet break, come back, take total control of the game, and crush his opponents in the next three sets to win the match.

Djokovic is able to do this, perhaps because deep down he has a lot of self-confidence, derived from years of his experience of winning and also because he can let go of his negative experience of loss, step up to a higher level of play, and keep his attention on nothing else but on every single ball in play.

Kyrgios can also maintain high level of concentration as long as he is ahead of his opponent.

He clinically destroyed at least two of his high calibre opponents during the Wimbledon tournament, without uttering much more than a single proverbial 'boo'.

Take for example, his three straight set Quarter Final victory against Garin. . Kyrgios played against him, after Alex de Minaur tragic loss to him in five sets, despite comprehensively beating him in the first two sets.

De Minour also became the victim of his own loss of confidence when he failed to reset after his opponent began to gain momentum in the third set.

De Minour was clearly the better player as long as he could get his first serves in.

But the more tense he became the more routinely he failed to make his first serve, offering the opportunity to his opponent to break him on his weaker second serve.

This problem did not occur to Kyrgios against Garin because he was able to maintain successful first serves during the game.

The key to his composure was that there was never a doubt about who was dominating that match.

But when such doubt reared its ugly head for Kyrgios against Djokovic in this year's Wimbledon Final, Kyrgyos also lost his cool in his four sets to one loss to Djokovic.

After a just about perfect first set win against Djokovic, the latter stepped up a level, but then Kyrgios could not match him.

Yet had Kyrgios been able to stay concentrating on every ball when he lost the momentum, he may have been able to come back and beat Djokovic as he did twice before in their only two previous encounters.

In terms of brilliant skills, Kyrgios may be able to match Djokovic, when he can stay relaxed and focussed on his game.

But where Djokovic proved superior to Kyrgios at Wimbledon was in his tremendous self-discipline in not allowing himself be distracted by negativity.

But then Djokovic always has had at least one trainer and he has taken his training, like Nadal and Federer, extremely seriously throughout his tennis career.

Neither of these can be said about Kyrgios.

What is perhaps the greatest barrier to Kyrgios' winning a Grand Slam and lasting at the top of tennis is his poor emotional maturity and his lack of motivation for seeking help to overcome it.

For example, he admitted, that before his previous match with Nadal he stayed up partying the whole night.

He insisted that he would not do this again before his scheduled match with Nadal at this year's Wimbledon semi-final.

Yet when Nadal pulled out with injuries in the last minute from this match, Kyrgios admitted that he only had one hour of sleep before the scheduled match.

However, should Kyrgios get through his impending court case successfully and train hard between now and next year's Australian Open, he might be able to add to his this year's double's victory there with Kokkinakis, a singles' trophy too, next year.