Tennis player Nick Kyrgios has hit back at men’s world number one Novak Djokovic after Djokovic said that he doesn’t “have much respect for him [Kyrgios], to be honest”.
Djokovic spoke to the media at Melbourne Park on Sunday afternoon where he made the comments.
“I’ve said this before. I think he’s good for the sport,” Djokovic said.
“Obviously, he’s someone that is different. He goes about his tennis, he goes about his off-court things in his own authentic way. I have respect for him.
“I have respect for everyone else really because everyone has a right and freedom to choose how they want to express themselves, what they want to do.
“My respect goes to him for the tennis he’s playing. I think he’s very talented guy. He’s got a big game. He has proven that he has a quality to beat any player really in the world in the past.
“Off the court, I don’t have much respect for him, to be honest.
“That’s where I’ll close it. I really don’t have any further comments for him, his own comments for me or anything else he’s trying to do.”
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Kyrgios clearly wasn’t going to take that lying down and said that Djokovic’s comments surprised him.
“It’s a strange one for me, because, you know, I read his comments, he said he doesn’t respect me off the court,” Kyrgios said.
“I’m, like, it actually would make complete sense to me if he was like, ‘look, I don’t respect the guy on the court’, because I understand if he doesn’t agree with some of my antics on the court that I have done in the past.
“When we’ve played matches, I think I’ve actually been pretty good towards him.”
“I’m not quite sure how he can’t respect me off the court,” the 25-year-old Australian said to the ABC.
“I feel like I’ve gone about things extremely well, especially during the pandemic, I was driving around delivering food to people during the pandemic that didn’t or couldn’t get the supplies.
“I was extremely careful about what I was doing, I didn’t want to spread the virus to anyone.
“Now I’m actually trying to donate meal kits to people that need food [and] I have my foundation.
“So it’s very strange to me as to why he would say he doesn’t respect me off the court.
“But, yeah, he’s a very strange cat, Novak is.
“Heck of a tennis player, but unfortunately someone that’s partying with his shirt off during a global pandemic, I don’t know if I can take any slack from that man. That’s as bad as it gets for me.”
However, if you’re keen on a tennis battle between the pair, it’s looking unlikely as the only time the pair could play together is in the semi-finals.
They also have to beat a range of other tennis legends, including rising German star Alexander Zverev and Austria’s Dominic Thiem.
