“I was genuinely contemplating if I wanted to commit suicide” – Kyrgios opens up about 2019 despair in latest episodes of Break Point

The Australian has struggled with injuries in 2023 which have limited him to just one official match so far

Image Credit: Antoine Couvercelle / Panoramic

June 23, 2023

Australian tennis star Nick Kyrgios has revealed the depths of his mental health struggles in the latest set of episodes of ‘Break Point’, which dropped on Netflix yesterday.

The Australian has spoken about his mental health struggles in the past but this is the first time that he spoke about the time when he felt suicidal, which came during the 2019 Wimbledon Championships where he lost in the second round to Rafael Nadal.

“There was time at Wimbledon where I wasn’t in the best head space. I was pretty bad here three years ago. 2019 was the lowest point of my career. That pressure, having that all eyes on you expectation, I couldn’t deal with it. I hated the kind of person I was. I was drinking, abusing drugs, lost my relationship with my family, pushed all my close friends away. You could tell I was hurting, my whole arm was covered in scars. That’s why I actually have my arm sleeve to cover it all,” Kyrgios says in the series, which chronicled the journey of the Australian and several other tennis stars through the 2022 season.

Nick would come up to my room, he’d be in tears and “Bro I don’t know what to do, I don’t want to be here”. It was just tough.
Daniel Horsfall, manager of Nick Kyrgios

“I was genuinely contemplating if I wanted to commit suicide. I lost at Wimbledon, I woke up and my dad was sitting next to me on the bed, full blown crying. It was a big wake up call for me; I was like “Okay, I can’t keep doing this”. I ended up in a psych ward in London to figure out my problems,” the Australian revealed.

Kyrgios’ manager Daniel Horsfall also opened up about the struggles the Australian went through during that time on the series. “2019 was tough. Nick was fucked. I don’t really talk about that with people, because no one understood what was going on and no one wanted to hear about it. Like he would come up to my room, he’d be in tears and “Bro I don’t know what to do, I don’t want to be here”. It was just tough.”

“He’s not told a soul the conversation they had in that room (the psych ward). No one knows. This year, he’s more focused, he wants to play, he wants to win. So, I’ve done my part in the background, trying to change old routines. So we don’t trigger something and cause him stress for no reason.”

Following his career-best season in 2022, Kyrgios has been out of action due to struggles with his knee, for which he underwent surgery in January. The Australian played, and lost, his first match of the season last week in Stuttgart and now faces a race to be fit for Wimbledon, which begins on July 3.

Kyrgios is also among the headliners for the upcoming UTS season, which kicks off on July 21st in Los Angeles. UTS Los Angeles will take place on hard courts, the surface on which the Aussie has won all of his seven career singles titles so far.