Nick Kyrgios: Andy Murray Deserved to Retire ‘More Gracefully’

Tennis player Nick Kyrgios, who has stated he has no immediate plans to retire, expressed his view that the physical suffering Andy Murray endured to extend his professional tennis career was “not worth it,” and that Murray merited a “more graceful” departure from the sport. Murray, a three-time Grand Slam champion from Scotland, concluded his career in August after experiencing a straight-set loss with Dan Evans during the Olympic men’s doubles quarter-finals. The 37-year-old Murray underwent significant hip operations in both 2018 and 2019, and had publicly discussed his retirement intentions at the 2019 Australian Open. Despite this, he continued to compete for an additional five years, though he did not advance beyond the third round in any of the four major tournaments. Kyrgios, an Australian player who has been sidelined by his own injury issues and has not participated in competitive play since August 2023, affirmed that he intends not to retire, but also stated he would not subject his body to the same degree of physical struggle that Murray experienced. “I look at how Andy Murray’s doing it now, and how Rafael [Nadal] is going out, I don’t want to be like that either. I don’t want to be kind of crawling to the finish line in a sense,” Kyrgios stated during an appearance on The Louis Theroux podcast. He continued, “What Andy Murray’s achieved in this sport is second to basically no-one… unless you are Novak [Djokovic], [Roger] Federer, or Nadal, like, the next person is Andy Murray.” Kyrgios added, “It’s like you’ve achieved everything. You deserve to go out, I think, a little bit more gracefully than he’s done.” Concluding his remarks, he said, “I think that the surgeries, the pain, it’s just not worth it, in my opinion.”