Nick Kyrgios will team up with Novak Djokovic at the Brisbane International after crediting the former world No1 for motivating his return from serious injury. Once bitter rivals but now firm friends, Kyrgios and Djokovic plan to play doubles at the Queensland tournament, which gets under way on 29 December.
The pair will use the event to warm up for next month’s Australian Open, with Kyrgios using an injury-protected ranking to secure a direct entry at Melbourne Park. The Australian posted the announcement on Instagram, using a photo of himself and Djokovic walking on to court ahead for their 2022 Wimbledon final which he lost in four sets, writing “Doubles at Brisbane. See y’all there”.
Djokovic told Kygrios in an interview at this year’s Australian Open that they needed to play doubles before he retired. “You’ve got to promise me something … recover quick, come back to the tour before I retire and we’ve got to play doubles,” Djokoivc said.
Kyrgios has managed just one ATP match since the 2022 US Open quarter-finals due to career-threatening wrist and knee injuries which required three rounds of surgery. The 29-year-old recently revealed that a pep talk from 24-time grand slam winner Djokovic had helped spur his comeback.
He said he contemplated giving tennis away with his wrist slow to heal from surgery 15 months ago but the record-setting Serb encouraged him to continue after they hit at Wimbledon this year. With his last tour match a short-lived return to grass at Stuttgart in June 2023, Kyrgios was in London working in commentary.
“I was hitting with Novak and when he said to me, ‘it doesn’t look like you’ve had surgery’, and that was a big motivation to say like maybe I’m actually making some inroads and some progress into getting back because I didn’t really know,” the one-time world No 13 said.
“That was a big drive for me … so, if he didn’t say that, I don’t know if I would have been motivated and if I would have kept pushing on the thought, but that was definitely a big part of the journey when he said that to me.”
Kyrgios will first play in the World Tennis League exhibition event in Abu Dhabi from 19 December, with the mixed team event also attracting the likes of Iga Swiatek, Casper Ruud, Aryna Sabalenka, Taylor Fritz and Daniil Medvedev. Kyrgios won the Australian Open men’s doubles title in 2022 with Thanasi Kokkinakis but the duo aren’t sure if they can manage the workload in Melbourne.
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“Everyone loved it last time, we loved it, it was so much fun,” Kokkinakis said last week. “It’s definitely not going to be the priority for us … singles is definitely the goal. “If you have a big five-setter the last thing you want to do is go out and play doubles the next day, but we’ll play it by ear and see how it goes.”
