Canberra \u00a0teenager Nick Kyrgios made a spectacular start to his senior Grand Slam career with a straight-sets upset over Czech veteran Radek Stepanek in French Open first round on Monday.<\/p>\n
The 18-year-old Kyrgios, the youngest player in the draw who only earned a wildcard spot after the injury withdrawal of compatriot John Millman, defied his age and world ranking of No.262 to post a 7-6(4) 7-6(8) 7-6(11) first-round victory.<\/p>\n
He is the first Australian player through to the second round, where he will face Croatian world No.10 Marin Cilic.<\/p>\n
Kyrgios signalled his exciting potential by winning the Australian Open junior title in January and has slashed has ranking by almost 600 spots since the start of 2013.<\/p>\n
He vowed he would not simply be making up the numbers in Paris and backed it up with the biggest win of his fledgling career against 34-year-old Stepanek, a former top-ten player now ranked 57th.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt (winning the match) felt about 10 times better than the championship point at the junior Australian Open,\u201d Kyrgios said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t really describe the feeling, to be honest. I just looked over at everyone that\u2019s been helping me over the last couple years. It was an unbelievable feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Playing on court 17 at the far reaches of Roland Garros, Kyrgios\u2019 nerves were clear to see in the opening games.<\/p>\n
But he settled after fighting back from 15-40 down to hold his first service game.<\/p>\n
He grew in confidence throughout the set, causing Stepanek problems with his big serve and booming forehand.<\/p>\n
The towering teenager came from 3-1 down in the tiebreak to take the first set, pumping his fists in front of an enthusiastic crowd.<\/p>\n
The players traded breaks early in the second set but Kyrgios staged an gutsy fightback to go two sets up in another tiebreaker.<\/p>\n
With the set seemingly out of his grasp at 6-1 down, he saved five straight set points before converting his second opportunity.<\/p>\n
The third set was decided in another epic tie-break, with Kyrgios converting his fourth match point when Stepanek volleyed into the net and the teenager raised his arms in celebration.<\/p>\n
Canberra-born Kyrgios, who idolises Roger Federer, came to the French Open expecting to contest another junior event before Tennis Australia handed him an opportunity following Millman\u2019s shoulder injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was obviously an unbelievable experience even walking out to be part of such a great tournament,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to thank Tennis Australia for that opportunity.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy goal today was just to go out there and enjoy every moment and give my best effort from the first point to the last. If I won today it was a bonus.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kyrgios still plans to play in the juniors at Roland Garros.<\/p>\n
Stepanek said he could have a bright future on the senior tour.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re good in the juniors, it doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re automatically going to be good in men\u2019s tennis,\u201d Stepanek said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut definitely he has some talent. He\u2019s serving big and if he keeps working hard, he definitely has a chance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bernard Tomic, Sam Stosur and Ash Barty open their campaigns on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Canberra \u00a0teenager Nick Kyrgios made a spectacular start to his senior Grand Slam career with a straight-sets upset over Czech veteran Radek Stepanek in French Open first round on Monday. The 18-year-old Kyrgios, the youngest player in the draw who only earned a wildcard spot after the injury withdrawal of compatriot John Millman, defied his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5910,"featured_media":5265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5910"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}