Nick Kyrgios complains of marijuana smell during US Open second round win
Updated
When he opened his eyes at 3am, the Australian teenager from Perth knew his tournament opener had slipped through his hands. “I definitely knew I’d play a very big part in the tournament,” he said.
The 18-year-old was serving in the second round against the world’s No. 19 seed Jarryd Lam. He was struggling at 3-2 on his first serve. With two more points, Kyrgios would be in the match. He could feel the match slipping away. So he pulled out a bag of marijuana from a jacket pocket and sucked on it.
“The more I smoke, the better I feel,” he said.
Kyrgios then went on to win the contest 6-3, 6-4, 6-3. The tournament was supposed to be more of an agony for the teenager, who lost his mother when she was diagnosed with a brain tumour in early 2013. As the 18-year-old tried to put his tournament victory into perspective, he said his first words were “I would like to say I’ve got a lot of good things,” rather than “I failed.”
“It’s been pretty hard for me to get over it. I always think of my mother, but also thinking about her fighting for me and everything,” Kyrgios said.
The teenager’s mother, Krista Kyrgios, died in 2012, just months after she was diagnosed with a single brain tumour.
“You think about the two of you, what you could have been, going to school at the same time and what you could have done together. So I think in some ways it’s nice to look back on that and just be happy that I got to play for my mom,” Kyrgios said.
The Australian teenager was playing in front of 21,938 people on the main Grandstand. In an era when women’s tennis is more competitive
