Nick Kyrgios withdraws from Indian Wells and Miami Open injured

Hit by another injury setback, Nick Kyrgios will miss Indian Wells and Miami as he recovers from the January injury that kept him away from the Australian Open.

Kyrgios went under the knife after retiring from Melbourne Park and the United Cup, and at the time his manager said he was targeting the start of the American hard court season at Indian Wells.

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The withdrawal will see Kyrgios hurt his ranking as world No. 19 but it wouldn’t be disastrous.

Last season he was a quarterfinalist at Indian Wells and a fourth-rounder in Miami, which means he’ll lose 270 points that he won’t defend this year.

On the current ATP rankings, he would drop to around 26 in the world.

If he can’t return by Wimbledon he might not be able to defend a total of 650 points, but that would put him around 33 in the world in the current rankings.

And Kyrgios is not defending points at the French Open and no player is defending points at Wimbledon because of the tournament’s decision to ban Russian and Belarusian players last season.

While his new timeline puts him on track to return during the clay-court season and compete at Roland Garros, the combination of the clay-court’s physical brutality, particularly on the knees, which has caused Kyrgios so many troubles throughout his career, as well as the Die The fact that the reigning Wimbledon finalist has always favored grass may mean he skips the clay court season entirely.

Playing just one clay event in 2022, Kyrgios reached the quarterfinals in Houston.

The reigning Wimbledon finalist was last on tour in Tokyo in October last year, where he also reached the quarter-finals.

He also played an exhibition tournament in Dubai in December, as well as an Australian Open warm-up match against Novak Djokovic before retiring from his home major.

Kyrgios and his physiotherapist revealed in January that the star had a cyst on his meniscus, in addition to a tear in his left knee, which required invasive arthroscopic surgery.

He said the Australian Open was one of the “most important tournaments” of his career and that the decision to withdraw was not taken lightly.

“I’m obviously very disappointed,” he said, before admitting it was just bad timing.

Physiotherapist Will Maher told the media Kyrgios tried everything to compete in Melbourne.

He said the tennis star even tried draining the cyst just a week after playing in hopes it would relieve some pressure.

“We took the charity event against Novak as a benchmark to see if he could compete at that highest level. He didn’t do well and still tries to give himself every chance in the following days to train afterwards,” said Mr. Maher.

“But it was clear that he was getting sore and sore with every session.”

Kyrgios will almost certainly be aiming for a return to full fitness to go one step further than last year’s Wimbledon where he lost to Novak Djokovic in four sets in the final.