Today was my last day at Wimbledon and as always, I had a ball. I wasn’t that enamoured with the line-up for Court No.1 today so ended the day with plenty of doubles on the outside courts. The highlight was getting a front row seat for the first round match featuring Barbora Strycova and Jurgen Melzer and Nick Kyrgios and Madison Keys. Both pairings were a bit like what the… so it was a must see. Here’s my recap and photos from the match.

Even from the warm-up, I knew this was going to be eventful. It was the first time i’ve ever watched Nick live. Immediately after hitting his first ball, he said “i’m so tight right now, I can’t play”. Kyrgios had just beaten Milos Raonic a few hours earlier. Nick also hit a ball out of court and then hit one towards spectators in the corner and apologised. He and Madison seemed to be having fun…

Kyrgios started the match serving to Strycova. Cue hilarity. Babs looked like she wanted to return it from outside the court. Kyrgios’s serve up close is really HUGE. There was one great point in the first set where Babs kept getting the ball back and her and Nick were grunting loudly during the point.

You could tell that Nick wasn’t taking it very seriously when he attempted a tweener on set point. He could have easily made the shot with a conventional groundstroke. After the missed tweener, Nick said “Help me, Madison!”. On the next point, a lady in the crowd shouted out “come on Madison, carry him”. Nick heard the comment and shot an angry stare in the lady’s direction haha. After missing the two set points, Kyrgios threw down a couple of aces before shooting another glare to the amusement of the crowd.

Kyrgios never stopped muttering during the match. After one Babs serve, he couldn’t believe the Czech player had served and volleyed on a second serve. He was constantly shooting looks to his team and making sarcastic comments about his game when he missed shots. He also kept applauding his opponent’s shots but I wasn’t sure if it was in a sarcastic manner! Keys aced Melzer a couple of times in one game and Jurgen also said “good serve” before smiling. Nick was also questioning many calls. After one, he said to the umpire “you gotta correct that, that was in dude”.

There was another one that Babs and Jurgen weren’t too thrilled about as the pictures below show…

Keys and Kyrgios won the first set, 6-3. The second set was much closer. I thought Babs played really well and she was superb at the net. Melzer didn’t play particularly well and said at one point “sorry, partner”. Kyrgios wavered in and out, and Keys missed  a few sitters, but they were pretty devastating power-wise when they got the ball in the court. The pair won, 6-3 7-6(3) in 67 minutes out on court 11.

At the end, a kid in the crowd said he’d swap his hat (one with a spinny thing on top) for Nick’s towel to which he responded “no mate”. Madison made the fair point though that “it was a pretty cool hat!”.

I love watching mixed doubles at Wimbledon and this was a good hour or so well spent! Keys and Kyrgios are a fun pair to watch and they will play Lukasz Kubot and Andrea Hlavackova in the second round.