Kyrgios suffers fresh injury blow ahead of Wimbledon
London
(AFP) - Nick Kyrgios insists he will play through the pain barrier to
keep his Wimbledon dream alive after the Australian star was forced to
retire from his Queen's Club first-round clash against Donald Young.
Kyrgios
needed lengthy treatment on his left hip after taking a nasty tumble
behind the baseline while stretching to make a shot in the ninth game of
the first set on Monday.
The
world number 20 decided to keep playing, but he was clearly affected by
the injury and, after Young won the first-set tie-break 7-3, Kyrgios
trudged to the net to withdraw from the Wimbledon warm-up event.
The
22-year-old admitted his fall on the slick court had aggravated the
same hip injury that troubled him during his French Open second-round
exit to Kevin Anderson.
But
Kyrgios, who has also been bothered by shoulder problems in recent
months, is still determined to compete at Wimbledon, which gets underway
on July 3.
"I'd
play Wimbledon if I was injured pretty bad, anyway. I'm here. I don't
really have time to go home or anything. Yeah, I'll be playing, for
sure," Kyrgios said.
"Obviously
my main goal is to play well at Wimbledon, so I'm going to try and get
it better and rehab it and hopefully it settles down. I'm sure it will."
Kyrgios was given anti-inflammatories when he came off court, but he is still waiting to see if a scan is necessary.
"I felt a sharp pain, pretty much everything I was feeling a month ago. It's not great at the moment," he said.
"I have been playing with a sore hip for a long time.
"There are worse things in the world than a guy slipping playing tennis. I'm sure I'll live."
Asked
what he'd do while he waits for the pain to subside, Kyrgios joked he'd
be "in the Dog and Fox", a pub near his house in Wimbledon.
- Painful -
Jo-Wilfried
Tsonga got back on track after his French Open nightmare as the world
number 10 eased to a 6-2, 6-2 win over Adrian Mannarino.
Tsonga's
strong start to his grass-court campaign was the perfect way to erase
the painful memory of an embarrassing first-round exit against
unheralded Argentine Renzo Olivo on the clay at Roland Garros.
"For
me it was really important to have a victory. On clay it was difficult.
I didn't play really well in Roland Garros," said Tsonga, who was
runner-up at Queen's in 2011.
"I
had the good sense to have a grass court at my house, so I just
practice and prepare this grass season, which is a good surface for me."
Fifth seed Tsonga will play Gilles Muller or Nikoloz Basilashvili in the second round.
Former Wimbledon finalist Tomas Berdych halted his slump with a 7-5, 6-3 victory over Belgium's Steve Darcis.
Berdych,
the world number 14, crashed out in the French Open second round to
continue a disappointing year in which he has gone without a trophy and
reached only one final.
The Czech veteran takes on Britain's Kyle Edmund or Canadian qualifier Denis Shapovalov in the second round.
Grigor
Dimitrov, the Bulgarian world number 11, cruised into the second round
with a 6-3, 6-1 win against Ryan Harrison of the United States.
Dimitrov,
the only player other than reigning champion Andy Murray to win the
Queen's title in the last four years, faces French qualifier Julien
Benneteau or British wild card James Ward in the last 16.
